Flowers for the Dead
by electric gurrl
Summary: Redbud for betrayal. Lavender for mistrust. Peony for anger. Hazel for reconciliation. Azula is frozen, Ty Lee is combusting and Mai is caught in the middle. Five years after the comet burns, three strangers meet again in the fading summer and attempt to kindle something new. Maizulee. Post The Search.
1. daffodil

**A/N: Some Quick Facts About This Fic  
>Chapters<strong>: 16.  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Mai / Azula / Ty Lee. Past Maiko and Tyzula. Also some Maizula, Tyzula and My Lee, before the Maizulee fully develops.  
><strong>Rated: <strong>M for threesome and twosome lesbian smut, attempted suicide, flashbacks and references to underage sex (12/13), coarse language, dubious consent, moderate violence, references to various types of child abuse, suggestive dialogue and some other dark and sexual themes.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: The chapters are titled after flowers labeled with Vanessa Diffenbaugh's meanings from a flower dictionary I have. The title comes from _A Streetcar Named Desire_ by Tennessee Williams.

* * *

><p><strong>Flowers for the Dead<strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter One<strong>

**Daffodil - (**_**new beginnings**_**)**

* * *

><p>"Flowers for the dead!" advertises a shopkeeper as Mai walks through the countryside.<p>

This town is quaint in the absolute worst way. She has spent her entire life in cities, but now she makes her way to her family's summer home to try to start again.

Her third try at life in three years.

"Flowers for the dead!" the ragged old woman calls again. Mai bows her head to keep from getting harassed and tries not to chuckle at how fitting the words are.

She arrives at the edge of town, atop a cliff with jagged rocks at the bottom. The sea beats against them, the salty spray bursting through the evening. The sun is setting majestically on the horizon and Mai recalls for a moment, with the twitch of her lips, how much she has always hated orange.

_"I don't hate you."_

_ "I don't hate you too."_

Thinking about Zuko is not allowed. Thinking about Zuko is not allowed.

She unlocks the door of the house and walks inside. It smells like her childhood, the scent making a thousand memories play in her mind. It has not fallen into complete disrepair, although the dust is disgusting. She needed to move on, move out, find her own life.

And if that means hiding out in the middle of the Fire Nation country in a decrepit manor, so be it.

Mai withdraws a switchblade when she sees spilled crumbs on the counter. _Not _a good sign. She runs her fingertip along the counter and finds it slightly damp. Something tells her that there is not a leak in the ceiling.

She walks through the shadowy halls, wishing she were a firebender so she could light her way properly. Everything is unused except the master bedroom, where the sheets are astray and an assortment of clothes are tossed carelessly on the floor. Red dresses and a pair of heels. So, apparently she has an intruder who likes to dress in expensive clothes Mai does not recall buying.

She walks to the mirror and finds make-up there. Weirdest intruder ever. Red lipstick, black, melted eyeliner. Raven hair tangled in a comb. Could be anyone. Why is this damned country so homogenous?

Of course there are the horror stories of showing up in your summer home and finding that someone had been living there. Who promptly kills your family and steals your children. But, examining her glittering switchblade, Mai thinks she can hold her own against any homeless person hiding here.

Even some kind of war criminal or fugitive. Probably a war criminal knowing her father. _Ugh_, probably one of his mistresses, and Mai realizes she is likely not in danger. Most government officials don't have very threatening secret girlfriends. Red dress, make-up, father's mistress. _Of course_.

She brews herself tea and hides on the window-seat with a book. The torrential rain pours over the ocean and Mai sincerely hopes she does not get caught in a hurricane on her first night. It is _exactly _the kind of thing that would happen to her. She closes her eyes and is woken abruptly with the sound of the door opening.

Out of her pocket she withdraws the switchblade. This place is dark and spooky and she is sure that there is no one breaking in. What could they gain from her summer home in the middle of nowhere? Okay, likely her father's mistress, she tells herself as she creeps to the master bedroom.

A familiar song being hummed by a vaguely familiar voice. "I Will Love You Until the End of Time" a song from... Ba Sing Se? That's where Mai heard it first.

And then it hits her like a punch in the gut.

"Get out of my house," Mai says calmly, pushing open the door. She lowers her knife and sees her intruder's eyes flicker wide as if this would never happen. "How long have you been here?"

"You can't just _interrogate _me," snarls Azula, crossing her arms.

"You can't just break into my house," Mai retorts dryly and Azula breathes in through her teeth. "Yet another thing I am an accomplice to..."

"You're not going to make me leave, are you?" Azula says softly, sitting down on the bed and batting her eyes. Mai rolls her eyes and shuts the door as if anyone is going to overhear them in the middle of nowhere.

"Why aren't you in the Earth Kingdom or something?" Mai sighs.

"Because that's where they're looking for me, obviously," Azula says with a haughty roll of her eyes. Mai makes no facial expression but is internally panicking and screaming.

Azula looks incredibly different from how Mai last saw her. Given, raving lunatic is not always a permanent condition. But she looks impeccably groomed and articulate and her eyes don't look like a cornered tiger-monkey.

"You realize I have to turn you in, don't you?" Mai continues and Azula can tell she is panicking and screaming internally, despite her not showing it.

"I think this poses a fortunate opportunity for you," Azula says with one hand out, palm upturned. Mai cocks an eyebrow. "You're trying to start over. That's why you trudged out to this forsaken pit of dried up grass and _farmers_. I'm trying to start over too. Maybe we could... start over together."

The sexual invitation layered in the worlds makes Mai shiver. Azula clenches her jaw at the discomfort of her old best friend.

That was a long time ago. A long time ago, and fucked up in more ways than one. And she never imagined herself with _just _Azula. There was always the _buffer _of Ty Lee making everything feel less disturbing with her positive attitude and crush on the princess. Mai, on the other hand, still feels rather haunted by the things she did between the ages of twelve and fifteen.

It's been years. A lot of years. This is _not _going to get stirred up again.

"I..." Mai sighs loudly and smashes her head into the wall. Azula cringes. "Look, you can... you can stay here."

Azula's eyes flicker but her face is immovable. Mai hates just giving this girl what she wants, but she tried to imagine herself dragging an unconscious Azula to the nearest police station and ending up responsible for a massacre. She would personally rather be accused of harboring a fugitive and not the obliteration of a small town.

"It'll be fun," Azula purrs, standing up confidently. Mai sighs again, rubbing her face. Azula smirks faintly. "We can make up for lost time."

"Oh, agni," Mai sighs as the princess invites herself out of the master bedroom and into the body of the mansion.

Mai closes her eyes and takes several deep breaths. She has gotten herself into worse situations, she supposes.

* * *

><p>"Look, dinner," Azula says, raising her eyebrows in hopes of praise, and Mai squints at her for a moment.<p>

"Is this a gesture of kindness?" Mai asks, hesitantly examining the soup. She touches it with one finger and hopes it is not poisoned.

"It's more of a bribe." Azula shrugs cavalierly.

"I would prefer gold pieces, or maybe an apology or three," Mai says and Azula laughs. Fake, forced, high. The princess sits down across from Mai at the table. So much for pleasant solitude as Mai reinvents herself. "I'm not joking about the apology thing."

Azula pretends she does not hear her, sipping from a glass of wine.

Silence. The most uncomfortable silence Mai has ever endured. And that includes awkward dates with Zuko when they were teenagers.

"So, you seem... less crazy than usual," Mai says and Azula makes a slightly pained expression for a fleeting second. "That's a good thing, I guess."

"I've been alright," Azula says.

"Now that's a lie," Mai says and the princess pouts. She swirls her spoon around in her soup, looking aggravated. "You can talk to me."

"I've not been alright, but I can take care of myself. Most of the time I'm fine," Azula says, shrugging slightly with her words. Mai purses her lips. "I'm..." Another shrug.

"If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to," Mai says with a vaguely empathetic shrug. Not caring instead of actively hating is the best praise you can get from her. "You just _can_."

"You're being incredibly amicable for someone who has every right to hate me," Azula states sharply, the tone instantly changing from a casual dinner between friends to a violent military interrogation. Mai tries not to be jolted by the shift. "Why do you even want to be my friend?"

"I don't really have any other friends. Even though you were evidently just trying to manipulate me, we both need to start over. We both need another chance and misery enjoys company," Mai says calmly and Azula squints at her. Finally, the princess deems Mai as honest in intentions and nods.

"You can eat it, you know. Poison isn't quite my style. I prefer lightning to the back of the head, execution style. Or perhaps an Agni Kai if I care enough about the person. If I were to kill you I would probably blind you momentarily with my fire, rip your knives from your clothes and turn them against you. Maybe slit your throat or stab you in the stomach or something. You really have nothing to fear from that soup," Azula says and Mai hesitantly takes a bite.

Mai finds the food surprisingly edible. Not more than edible, but edible, which is new for Azula. Maybe she has learned a thing or two in her three years as a fugitive.

After they eat, Azula lies on the windowsill, the pale moonlight illuminating alabaster skin and golden eyes. Mai leans against the wood, examining Azula and wondering when it all went wrong. When they lost their way. Because she loves her, and despite all the bad blood, she loves her to this day.

"You look surprisingly good for a insane asylum escapee," Mai says, half expecting Azula to combust in reaction. But the princess laughs, concave stomach shifting with her genuine laughter.

"You are surprisingly not panicking about harboring a fugitive," Azula responds, smirking, one side of her rosy lips curled.

"I don't panic. I don't really... have emotions."

"But I confuse your feelings, don't I?" Azula mocks, smirk widening. Mai rolls her eyes and glances out at the ocean and the sky of stars.

"You're more confusing physically than mentally," Mai admits dryly, as if it isn't shocking. Maybe it isn't. Azula can read people like books.

Azula sits up not pushing off with her hands to Mai's surprise. The girl has impeccable strength and an even more perfect body. Mai squirms uncomfortably as Azula's lips touch hers. Mai closes her eyes and briefly does not want it to end, but when it does and Azula lies back down, hands resting over her navel, she is relieved that it was cut off quickly.

_"Promise you'll remember that you're mine," Azula murmurs, fingers caressing Mai's neck and causing an involuntary shudder._

_ "No promises," Mai replies and Azula does not seem offended. Their faces and shoulders are streaked with red make-up like love bites. Ty Lee is trying to sleep and trying not to be jealous, because she knows that they would never touch each other if she weren't there as a buffer._

_ But Azula and Mai have more in common, a stronger friendship than Ty Lee could ever have. She is an outsider and her ruby stained body is curled into itself as her friends laugh and pretend she does not exist._

* * *

><p>"You look distracted, Ty Lee," Suki says, rubbing her chin. Her sweaty and runny make-up is left all over her fingers.<p>

"Just thinking." Ty Lee shrugs and then flashes a smile. "I know, surprising."

"A letter came for you. It slipped my mind," Suki says, looking at the Fire Nation seal and recalling how she debated giving it to Ty Lee or not. Her home nation gives her conflicted feelings uncharacteristic of her happy-go-lucky attitude. She seems _angry _when she hears about the Fire Nation. "I didn't open it or anything, but it's from the Fire Nation."

"That's nice." Probably from Mai. Ugh... probably from Mai.

She follows Suki to the makeshift office of the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. It is stacked with antique weapons and important political information. Politics were never Ty Lee's speed, unlike her two old friends who discussed them regularly.

She wonders where Azula is. Where she is living, if she is living. And if she loves Ty Lee to this day or it was all a lie.

T_hey run into each other and Ty Lee apologizes for Azula's own outburst. It has always been easier that way._

_ "I'm not going to do that, Azula. It's been years. A year since we last saw each other, which isn't what I'd call pleasant," Ty Lee says hesitantly and brightly, despite the darkness lingering in the words. Seeing what Azula has become is killing her. "Maybe I would consider it if you went home to your brother but─"_

_ "You sold your soul to people... people we should hate. I'm offering you something you've always wanted," Azula says, her eyes flickering in ways Ty Lee has never seen._

_ What has Azula become? Ty Lee reaches forward and tries to touch her, tries to pull her to her, despite her declining the offer, but Azula didn't get what she wanted. And Ty Lee is never going to win now._

_"You let me believe that I was loved and wanted and then showed me it was all a sham," Azula snarls, after a feeble encounter with her old friend. _

_ Azula continues, "That is the _worst _thing you can ever do to someone."_

_ "Then why are you here?" Ty Lee breathes and Azula shrugs. Her lip curls into a snarl, or maybe a mirthless smile. _

_ She turns, her shoulders shuddering, and Ty Lee does not go after her._

_ For the first time, the acrobat feels true, unadulterated _anger_._

It wasn't a lie. At least not to Ty Lee. Regardless of the trysts that were beyond inappropriate for their age. Of disturbing games of a sexual nature when they were too young to understand sex in the slightest. And somehow, Ty Lee decided that was love.

Which explains why she hasn't been able to hold a relationship for more than two weeks in several years.

Suki hands her the letter and Ty Lee rips it open with her thumb. It is from Mai. Forced and nearly perfect handwriting, but a handful of misspellings.

"She wants me to visit her at her family's summer home," Ty Lee says. "Oh good, she specifies which one."

"I think you should go," Suki says and Ty Lee is surprised. "She's probably lonely without Zuko."

"She hasn't missed me before," Ty Lee says, but the truth is she never asked. Her island slumber is too pleasant to wake up. Seeing Mai again would be opening her eyes to a blinding light, and she may never sleep again.

She resigned herself to Kyoshi Island, but she packs her things and prepares to meet Mai for a few weeks. A vacation will be nice, she supposes. And maybe Mai needs her now that she is so isolated from everyone else.

Ty Lee feels bad for not seeing her in so long. She has forgotten where she came from, where her blood stems from. It is easier to claim she hates her country than to face her past there.

As Ty Lee packs many miles away, Azula is changing her clothes. Mai is baffled by her change from clothes she can fight in to more, erm, flattering things.

"Did you find those here?" Mai asks, Azula noticing how her eyes follow the princess.

"No. I picked them up along my way," Azula says, running one finger along the vanity. Her fingernails make a repugnant sound on it, but in the mirror, she slips off the front of the careless dress she was wearing, one that was wrinkled from sleeping in it relentlessly. For being frozen to her hiding place.

Mai swallows and closes her eyes, as the clothes drop from Azula's form. The princess examines herself in the mirror, fingers caressing her own body. She pulls on her pajamas and slips into the bed. Mai looks at her and lies down, not going beneath the blankets.

"You're afraid we'll sleep together," Azula says, cocking her head to the side. She looks like she is mocking Mai.

"Maybe," Mai says with a small shrug. "I don't know anymore."

"I'm open to whatever you want to do," Azula says softly and Mai slips under the blankets. She supposes she has nothing to lose if the night escalates.

"It's hot here," Mai murmurs, commenting on the fading summer. It has been in transition for longer than most summers are.

"Mhm," Azula responds, her eyes on the window as she tries to sleep. When Mai touches her skin it has goosebumps as if she is cold, despite the summer heat.

Mai slips her hand to Azula, more hesitantly than she ever has. The princess does not move, does not show if she likes it or not and Mai is afraid she is going to set off a downward spiral. That a kiss or a touch could make her lose it entirely.

"I'm not that fragile." Azula turns over and Mai pulls back her hand too quickly. "You think I'm going to break at any minute."

"You... you kind of look like you're barely holding it together," Mai breathes and Azula kisses her. Mai feels nauseated for a moment as years worth of forbidden and invisible touches play behind her eyes.

Azula wraps one leg around her, turning her over. On top of her, Mai hopes she won't be hit by a deathblow. But Azula is pulling off her shirt as if this is perfectly normal. As if the past years did not happen.

"I'm sorry I never visited you," Mai says slowly, interrupting the delicate stripping Azula is in the middle of. The princess stops, her shirt half hanging out, one breast exposed and the other covered.

"I probably wouldn't have even recognized you. Or worse." Pause. "I mean, I would have liked that. But given the circumstances... and the entire me blaming you for everything that went wrong in my life... I think I can forgive it." A small, overtly sexual smirk.

"This feels wrong without her," Mai says and Azula sighs, pulling up her sleeve back onto her shoulder. "It does. She made it... easier."

"Because it's just so terrible to sleep with _me_," Azula says, rolling off of Mai with the grace of a firebender.

"I didn't mean it that way," Mai says softly, but Azula does not respond. "If you want to, I mean, you're in control."

Azula blinks a few times.

"Do you really think I just did those things with you two because I wanted to be in control?" she asks, her voice shaking slightly. She seemed perfectly fine for the entire evening, catching up and being charming and witty and _Azula_, but now she sinks into how Mai saw her when she took her to the asylum with Zuko.

"I don't think that was your reason. But I think you like to be in control physically," Mai says, touching her back. Azula turns around, her eyes somewhat hollow. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to be in control during sex. I personally don't care but..."

"Am I better than my brother?" This has been asked many times before.

"Don't ask me that anymore, princess," Mai says and Azula studies her hesitantly. Wonders if she can ever trust her again. "But, I'm here with you, not there with him."

Azula slips across the bed, still beneath the expensive sheets and comforter, and presses her lips against Mai's. Mai returns the kiss with less passion than most would, but that is simply how she is. She can be incredibly strong and defiant of Azula, like she proved at the Boiling Rock. Like she has proved during their games. But also vaguely passive when she wants to be.

She has always been more complicated than Ty Lee.

Azula never liked that, which most likely explains why she fell for Ty Lee and not Mai.

Their lips meet, legs tangled as Azula is clearly thinking about far different things than the moment. Her hand slips behind Mai's back. Mai swallows as a kiss breaks, unsure if she can keep going. But she does, loathing herself for it as she slips Azula's panties over her ankles and loses them in the sheets.

Legs further tangled, gasping. Mai does not show the pleasure she feels and Azula finds it off-putting, as she always did.

Trust. Oh, trust, so forgotten in the motions of limbs and the moans of orgasm.

_Thirteen and blossoming in the shadows, like moonflowers. Azula stares into the mirror as if it can answer her questions. She is close to the edge, and everything feels like it is falling apart. But you couldn't see that in her face if you tried. Her two friends are in states of disarray as the night gets longer and longer._

_A thousand cold caresses mean nothing to Azula._

_ And a million cold caresses couldn't keep Mai and Ty Lee with her._

_ No matter who they come from._

Azula wakes up from a strange and distorted nightmare. Her heart races with the feeling of impending doom. The lamp in the hall that still glows but burns low looks like the eyes of something coming for her. She closes her eyes.

_Don't show Mai._

_ You're better than this._

She does not open her eyes again until morning.

* * *

><p>Two weeks pass preternaturally quickly. Azula seems less and less alright or stable the more Mai is with her, but she does not comment. They have fallen into a sort of routine that neither of them complains about. But their vaguely idyllic and slightly sick life is interrupted by the arrival of Ty Lee.<p>

She pounds on the door cavalierly, not having any idea what waits within. She has far too much luggage for someone who lives amongst peasants, and Mai opens the door half dressed. Ty Lee averts her eyes quickly, afraid to reawaken anything archaic.

"You packed lightly," Mai remarks sarcastically, cocking an eyebrow. Ty Lee hugs her, an assault of cinnamon and arms much more powerful than they look. Mai coughs and Ty Lee prances away, picking up her bags and inviting herself inside. "There's something I couldn't put in the letter in case a Kyoshi Warrior or Sokka read it or something."

Ty Lee tilts her head to the side like a confused poodle-monkey.

"We left off on the wrong foot. Let's start over," says a purring, familiar voice that makes Ty Lee's blood run cold.

"We are gonna go to jail!" Ty Lee screams, shaking Mai by the arms. The noble doesn't react; she simply waits for Ty Lee to calm down and stop hyperventilating.

"You've been an accomplice to worse things," Azula says, prying Ty Lee from Mai gently. Her hands linger on Ty Lee's arms for too long.

"Azula, it is _over _between us. I tried to apologize to you and tried to make you feel better and, ugh, you just, ugh! Mai, if you're trying to set us up again, you are making a mistake!" Ty Lee exclaims and Azula looks started, her golden eyes wide and glittering.

"Relax," Azula says softly and Ty Lee glares at her. "I'm not asking you immediately forgive me, but I wasn't exactly in the best mental state. A lot can change in two years."

"Two years?" Mai asks, stepping in front of Ty Lee to prevent her from trying to throttle Azula. "You ran away three years ago."

"I tried to get her to join me," Azula says and Ty Lee makes a sour expression. "It didn't work out as I planned."

Mai glances between them both.

"Your anger at each other won't last through the day," she deems and Ty Lee scoffs. Azula shrugs with a satisfied smirk. "Ty Lee, just give her a chance. All she wants is to start over. Just like me. Like you must."

"I have a perfectly happy life on Kyoshi Island."

"You're not a very good liar," Azula chimes and Ty Lee frowns.

"I'll give you both _one chance_," Ty Lee states firmly, holding up one finger. "I do love you both. I love you both more than I love anybody else, but I'm not happy with either of you right now."

"You won't regret it," Mai says earnestly, without a hint of sarcasm or apathy.

Things change and Ty Lee hates it. She wishes everything could be just like it was when they were thirteen and stupid and in love with each other. Or at least she thought they were in love. Maybe it wasn't.

And so she dives headfirst into waters that are more treacherous than she is prepared for.

* * *

><p>Ty Lee feels like she has been here before. Waking in an unfamiliar bed between two familiar people. They look different, they all looks different and feel different and sound different. None of it makes sense to her. She rises from the bed, looking at the sun gently rising over the horizon.<p>

The ocean is beautiful, prettier than Kyoshi Island. She never came to the countryside much; her father was born in a farmhouse and upgraded to a Caldera mansion when he came into money and political power. Her mother was raised in a mining town in the colonies. They both hated these middle of nowhere towns.

As she moves to leave the room, she sees that Azula and Mai have obliterated the space where Ty Lee was sleeping and moved so close together they are breathing on each other. The Kyoshi Warrior purses her lips and walks to find something to eat. She feels out of sorts, caught in-between.

_"We were supposed to live happily ever after."_

_ "You and Azula were going to." Mai. Prison. Ty Lee crying._

_ "It's not how you think it is."_

_ "It's _exactly _how I think it is."_

_ And then they are on each other. Without her. All over each other in a dim and dirty cell._

Ty Lee is peeling apart a piece of fruit when she feels a presence behind her. Azula partially sits on the counter, still in a bathrobe, but wearing full make-up as if it makes a different. The sun shines on her hair and Ty Lee would have once thought she looked like a goddess.

"You always looked good in the sun," Ty Lee says, trying to make this less uncomfortable. For the first time Ty Lee has ever seen, Azula looks like she is trying to find the right words. "I'm not angry. I'm just... I moved on."

"We were teenagers. It's not going to be like it used to be ever, because we've both grown up." Silence. Ty Lee has to admit she is right, but she does not want to verbalize it. "But I don't know how you can hate me. I have only ever loved you."

Ty Lee squeezes the orange in her hand and it bursts. Azula does not flinch, but her eyes flash.

"You have a really distorted view of reality, princess," Ty Lee says and Azula nearly vomits. She has never seen... rage in Ty Lee's eyes. "Everything I did, I did so much for you, I... and then you show up after a year and ask me to go on the run with you like it's _so romantic_. Oh I'm so fortunate to elope with this lunatic when my life is perfectly fine without her."

"Your life would never be fine without me," Azula says sharply and Ty Lee sighs in exasperation.

"You are the most _hot and cold _person I've ever been with in my life. One moment I thought we could really have a future together and the next you would tell me I wasn't worth your spit. You are not a healthy person to be involved with. You aren't a healthy person period."

Azula does not know what to say. Her nose tingles and her eyes swell and she tries to hide it. Ty Lee sets down the busted orange when she sees tears in Azula's eyes. She has never seen that... not once.

"I'm sorry," Ty Lee whispers, her voice gentle and sweet and bubbly.

Azula shakes her head and walks outside. And she is gone. Again.

Ty Lee spends more time watching her walking away than coming to her.

"Why were you screaming angrily? I didn't think you were capable of being so pissed off," Mai says with a small laugh. And then the seriousness of it hits her and she regrets chuckling.

"I should never have come here." Ty Lee simply sits there, looking dejected. Mai does not know what to say. Azula is cold and weirdly kind, Ty Lee is livid and miserable, and Mai is... there.

"You're not you. What happened?" Mai asks hesitantly, unsure if she wants to know. Ty Lee shrugs.

"I've just been knocked down too many times to constantly smile." She walks down the shadowy hallway, leaving Mai baffled and uncomfortable.

She walks after Ty Lee, leaving Azula for later. Of course she will wind up playing mediator in whatever madness the two of them have gotten themselves into. Mai does not care either way most of the time and that has always worked in her favor.

"What happened?" Mai asks, staring at Ty Lee sitting on an antique chair and looking dejected. Mai purses her lips, stunned by how not... bubbly and optimistic she is. She just looks angry, filled with virulent rage. Maybe Mai should have never invited her.

"Azula happened," Ty Lee sighs, her voice strained with a tone Mai has never heard. Her voice has always been a blithe and girlish chirp. Now she sounds like she is trying to restraint herself from screaming.

"You've changed," Mai remarks and Ty Lee shrugs.

"No. I was perfectly happy and optimistic with my new friends on Kyoshi Island. Then I came here and you decided to... I haven't changed, Mai. Anyone would have these feelings in this situation," Ty Lee says and Mai believes her. Maybe she is happier on Kyoshi Island than she would be in the Fire Nation. "My life was cheery and perfect with sunshine and warrior training and ─ ugh!"

"This is clearly more than that chi blocking incident. Or, uh, _both _chi blocking incidents. What aren't you telling me?" Mai asks and Ty Lee squirms uncomfortably. She picks at her fingers and finally takes a deep breath.

"Two years ago I ran into Azula. She asked me to marry her and come with her as a fugitive," Ty Lee says calmly and Mai's eyebrows shoot up. It is the most severe expression Ty Lee has ever seen on her face. "What did she think I was going to do? Fall all over her just because we sort of dated as teenagers?"

"And so you two fought and... well." Mai just shrugs. Ty Lee tries to compose herself.

"It's just hard to be an optimist about her," Ty Lee says and Mai is startled. She does not think she has ever thought on the bright side more than Ty Lee. "I'm going to try. I don't want to lose any friends. I _want _to be happy, and I want her to be happy too, but you can understand why I'm frustrated?"

"I actually think it's kind of petty," Mai says and Ty Lee grits her teeth like an animal about to strike. "_But_, clearly you feel strongly about this."

"I would be with her again. And with you again," Ty Lee says with a soft sigh. "But I need her to not feel so _entitled _to me. And you to try to care for once."

Mai waves her hands, "Okay, no. I think taking on Azula's entitlement issues is biting off more than you can chew. I'll try, uh, caring. Sort of."

Ty Lee shrugs. "I don't have to like her to try to enjoy myself. I mean, you never know. Maybe by the end of this slumber party we'll be completely different people."

She sounds strangely hopeful of that for someone who claims to have never been happier.

"Yeah. Keep thinking like that. No, I'm not being sarcastic," Mai says earnestly before walking out of the room.

Ty Lee starts taking deep breaths with her eyes closed, trying to erase her negative vibes. But _Azula_, Azula radiates negative vibrations. But forgiveness is part of friendship. Ty Lee breathes in a little too harshly and her nose hurts. She goes back to the gentle breathing, trying to cure _her _negative vibes.

Mai walks outside to the hot summer countryside with a cold oceanic breeze and finds Azula shooting lightning off of a cliff. Again. Again. Again.

"Azula," Mai says and she turns around with electric blue reverberating through her body. Mai puts her hands up with a mocking smirk and Azula shoots the lightning at the rocks. Half of the dirt and stone crumbles off of them. "I need to talk to you."

"I'm clearly busy," Azula says coldly, crossing her arms.

There's the violent heat of Ty Lee, and the cold, detached tone of Azula. Both of them screwed over. Both of them insane. One more than the other...

"I want to talk to you about Ty Lee. If you piss her off again she's probably going to go back to her peasant island and expose you. And then you'll have to be babysat by Zuko and be grounded for 'til the rest of your life," Mai says, attempting to inject sarcasm to avoid Azula shutting down entirely.

That tends to happen when Mai tries to talk to her about anything more important than casual conversation.

"I have never done anything to her. Well, nothing she didn't deserve." Azula turns around and Mai loses her. Ugh.

Mai sips her cup of tea and frowns faintly. The expression is almost invisible on her pallid face.

"She told me you asked her to marry you," Mai says and Azula shrugs.

The princess crosses her arms, her hair billowing in the wind. Mai sees her posture, how it isn't as straight and confident as it used to be. Her thoughts flicker to the nights they've been together where she could forgot about Zuko for an hour or three, but in the morning... Azula pretends it didn't happen.

"She wasn't lying," Azula responds icily. Her voice still purrs, and it always was cold, but now it feels like ice water. If feeling a voice makes any sense. It used to be a glacial fire with slight heat. But Azula is frozen over like an ice sculpture. "But I don't care how she responded. I don't need her and I've never needed either of you. I never cared about anyone. Not even my father."

"You can't detach yourself from reality forever," Mai replies quietly, taking half of a step towards Azula and then rethinking it.

"I'm not _detached_," Azula snaps coldly and Mai sips her tea.

Mai does not want to delve further into this hypothermic water. Detached Azula is better than violent Azula, better than the Azula that would throw something across a room and devolve into shrieking harsh words and clawing at her skin. She no longer radiates the power she had, but Mai has seen her in a state that still makes her feel nauseous.

What's crazier? The girl who fights like an animal or the girl who decides to pretend the world, her past and her feelings don't exist? Mai isn't sure.

"Maybe we'll wind up together again," Mai says and Azula snorts derisively.

"I don't have that _delusion_. You think our relationship can be repaired by being locked up in a house together for a few weeks?"

"You didn't feel anything when we shared a bed again last night. Close to each other and..."

Azula punches blue flame at the wind. Mai nods, not wanting to push this any further, and returns to the house to shut herself in her room and not deal with her incredibly insane friends. And past lovers, if that's even a word that could describe what they had. It was _very _different from her relationship with Zuko, to say the least.

We all have our ways to pretend the hurt isn't real.

* * *

><p>AN: This chapter is significantly longer than the others. I debated how I was slicing this fic for a long time and it's uneven-ish, like Restraint. Probably very few people are going to read this pairing, but I hope you enjoyed it if you read this far.


	2. redbud

**Chapter Two**

**Redbud - (**_**betrayal**_**)**

* * *

><p>They are all people they once knew. An infinite amount of changes, small that grow like cracks, slowly consuming the rock until it crumbles and falls. Mai is caught in between, Ty Lee attempting to change Azula as if that is a feasible thing to do. And Azula with a layer of ice over her entire body.<p>

"I don't care if you two get together," Mai says casually as she watches Ty Lee watch Azula through the window.

She is pretty sure the princess can tell, as she moves through motions she remembers and follows without the passion she used to have. Her fire is hot enough to melt metal but her heart is a block of ice in place of the fire that could burn down a kingdom.

_"I wish I had that," Mai says, sitting on the grass and feeling it damp all over her skirt. They have returned from their adventure, their journey to Ba Sing Se and the return as victors. But it feels surreal to Mai._

_"What?" Azula asks, tugging grass out of the ground and dissecting it with slender fingers. The green goo inside of each blade of grass stains her hands like off-color blood._

_"The _fire _inside of you that makes people... follow you," Mai says, just having seen Azula brief the Dai Li on what they are to do during the invasion. "A couple weeks ago they were sworn to defeat anything in red clothes and now they look like they would follow you into death itself."_

_"I wouldn't call it a fire," Azula says with a shrug, though her cheeks are slightly flushed and her lips slightly smug. "I have a, hmm, gravitational personality."_

_Silence._

_Azula asks, dropping the grass and rubbing it off of her hands, "Would you follow me into death itself? Or have you started to prefer my brother?"_

_"Are you going to make me choose?" Mai asks flatly and Azula looks disappointed for a flicker of a second. "You are, aren't you?"_

_"No," Azula says, pushing off of the ground and leaving Mai behind her._

_And Mai is left wondering what she said that was so wrong._

_Gravitational personality... ugh._

"I think you do," Ty Lee chirps and Mai can feel the plasticity of her high and flirty tone. "You feel it too. I mean, before you had Zuko, but, well, you burned that bridge."

"He'd get back together with me," Mai says, surprised at the fact she is offended. She is _starting over_ and thoughts of Zuko are not allowed. Definitely not allowed.

"Do you forgive her?" Ty Lee asks sweetly, with the innocence of a child. Mai steps away from the window, turning her back to Azula.

"I don't know." Mai shrugs.

"That's what you say when you're too scared to give the real answer. I always thought you were so brave but you─"

"Just don't," Mai says and Ty Lee clamps her mouth shut. "I don't know either way."

"I think I don't." And then Ty Lee's eyes narrow slightly. "I don't think I ever will."

"Maybe this vacation will make some changes. Our last one sure did," Mai says and Ty Lee screws up her face in confusion. "What? That was when it ended. You chose her and I chose him and I'm sure it was an awful lot healthier than whatever _it _was."

"I think we chose wrong," Ty Lee whispers, her expression soft again. Mai shrugs, not wanting to delve further into this. "Sometimes I think about when everything was... different. I mean, I shouldn't because I have the perfect life but I think about the night after Omashu or that time I forced you two to go to the zoo in Ba Sing Se or when we came back from the drill and..."

"Yeah. But those good times are pretty outweighed by bad times," Mai says and Ty Lee shrugs.

"I guess that's the difference between us," Ty Lee says and Mai laughs for some reason.

"The night after Omashu, ugh," she says, leaning against the counter and laughing as much as Mai is capable of laughing.

_"Ugh, just look at my hands. My fingers are... bent," Azula says haughtily, examining her hands with a small grimace painted on her rosy lips. "Why did you not stop me?"_

_"You left us to fall down four stories," Mai replies sharply, pointedly rubbing her bruised back. "You can't complain about us not stopping you for trying to chase the kid who can fly."_

_The three friends are in their meager accommodations of the military base outside of Omashu, positioned a safe distance from the currently unoccupied Gaoling, and the series of minute villages that the Azula plans entirely to conquer on her way to seize the Avatar, and, uh, Zuko, yes, Zuko too, of course._

_Ty Lee is wrapped entirely in blankets, attempting to sleep but realizing that Mai and Azula are about to start tearing at each other's throats. Her deep brown eyes are focused intently on a large scratch in the wall as she tries to tune out her two best friends. Azula sits on the edge of the mattress, one foot kicking back and forth repeatedly and tempting Mai to just hack it off starting at the ankle._

_And Mai sits on the dresser, half clothed and ready to pass out. Her face is black from smeared make-up, her body posture bent. _

_"You both lived," Azula says, shrugging contentedly._

_"How wonderful." Mai cannot suppress her smirk and Azula feels quite satisfied. She may resist but Mai is already twisted to the core. "I have a weird finger too. From you dropping a textbook on it."_

_"I don't recall ever doing such a thing," Azula replies snidely and Mai sighs. She holds out one hand to the dim light of the shoddy military issue lamps. She has a distinct mallet finger from the wound not being treated quickly enough, due to the fact that she did not express the pain to the proper level. _

_"It was an accident. But it was an Azula accident," Mai says, cocking an eyebrow pointedly._

_"An Azula accident?" The Princess does not look pleased, but Mai knows that she secretly likes it. She prefers being fearsome over beloved, and Mai has to admit it is quite sexy._

_"Which means it was entirely on purpose," Mai sighs, thrusting her finger towards Azula's face. It takes a moment for the princess's eyes to adjust to the sudden, slender object dominating her view. "Look at what you did."_

_Azula pauses, clearly contemplating her choices. Mai is quite familiar with the conniving look of smug superiority as she makes her decisions. _

_And Azula's decision is bewildering to Mai, because instead of making some snarky comment or tossing around haughty insults, she puts Mai's finger into her mouth._

_"Well that's incredibly unsanitary." Mai lingers a little too long and then feels violently uncomfortable. She carefully withdraws her finger, attempting not to be bitten._

_"You liked it," Azula says with a haughty sigh. Mai touches her lips with one finger again, pressing slightly against her teeth. Ugh, her teeth are too perfect._

_Mai pushes her onto her back and Ty Lee makes a whining sound. Azula glances at her as Mai is holding her in place. _

_"What's wrong with you?" Azula asks calmly, sounding as if it is an inconvenience._

_"Are you two _really _going to do this. Are you seriously going to do this with each other while I'm sleeping a few inches away," Ty Lee says shrilly and Mai lets go of Azula's wrists, but does not move off of her hips._

_"Of course not," Azula says gently, as if talking to a child. "We would ask you to join us like civilized people."_

"It was a good night," Ty Lee says in response to Mai. "A lot of them were. This is so confusing. I just want to strangle my feelings."

She makes throttling motions with her hands. Mai wonders what made her so angry. Maybe bottling up her rage and pain has slowly consumed her. Maybe she needs to start over too.

"I think you should start over with us," Mai remarks and Ty Lee clenches her teeth. She gets headaches from clenching it in her sleep and in her waking moments.

"I, unlike you two crazy people, managed to make something of myself," Ty Lee says passionately, somehow with a kind and caring intonation.

Azula enters the dining room and Mai's eyes flicker to the window.

"It startles me that you claim for your whole life you wanted to be _unique_, but you decided to join a group of girls who dress in identical clothes and make-up. You decided to live in poverty on an island where you will never be envied. I doubt you even remember what it feels like for people to hate you so much that they want to be you," Azula says smoothly, palm upturned. Ty Lee's stomach hurts as she grimaces. "Of course, if you're happy just being one of a million, a little speck everybody forgets about, by all means..."

Ty Lee sighs. "I'm happy there," she insists, and Mai really thought Azula had broken through the wall Ty Lee has built.

The acrobat walks away and disappears down the hall.

* * *

><p>"Have you slept with her?" Ty Lee demands of Mai out of nowhere. Azula went to bed an hour ago and they are up staring at the night sky over the ocean. Ty Lee finds it beautiful; Mai finds it incredibly boring. It's just a bunch of water and air.<p>

"Why does it matter?" Mai replies, yawning pointedly. Ty Lee looks at her with a glint in her eyes that Mai is unfamiliar with.

"It doesn't matter. I just want to know," Ty Lee says, ripping threads out of the sofa systematically.

"Yeah. A couple of times since we ran into each other here," Mai says and Ty Lee tears one thread too hard and the arm of the couch collapses. "Obviously, you still have a lot of feelings for her. That's what changed. Don't blame me and Zuko. You two got closer than we ever planned on doing."

"It's easier to blame you and Zuko than to blame her," Ty Lee whispers and Mai shrugs. She does not care either way; but Azula chose Ty Lee and Mai chose Zuko and that was how it played out in the end. The Terrible Trio and their sexual misadventures came to an end sometime after Ember Island.

"I'm not jealous or something. I don't get jealous," Ty Lee says, suddenly quite defensive. Mai feels like this was all a mistake, and maybe she should leave. Keep running. Trying to reinvent herself with no success.

"It isn't like you've never slept with me," Mai says and Ty Lee grits her teeth again. Mai squints at her and decides not to ask. "That's how it's always been. You guys were the ones who tried to make it something more."

"What was it?" Ty Lee asks, setting her face on her hand. "What were we doing? We were so young, we shouldn't have even known about that stuff."

"I have no idea. It isn't something to get so hung up on. Just relax and try to enjoy your starting over," Mai says, leaning against the cold glass window in the summer heat. As the summer dies, the three of them try to give life to something that is long dead.

"I'm going to sleep," Ty Lee says, standing up too fast and catching herself with an acrobat's grace as her numb legs nearly knock her over.

She walks in and finds Azula lying there, not asleep but not fully awake. Ty Lee shuts the door quietly and Azula jolts up like she just slammed it.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack. Don't do that," Azula snarls and Ty Lee tries to be sympathetic. But empathy is a little hard with Princess Azula.

"So you and Mai are together now or something?" Ty Lee asks, trying to make it sound like gossiping but the resentment is visible in her burning voice. Azula feels a coldness in her limbs and gut as Ty Lee's cheeks are flushed.

"I wouldn't call it together. She still loves him," Azula says, brushing half of her hair behind her ears. "Sex isn't relationships."

"Yeah," Ty Lee says sweetly and it feels like poison in a piece of candy. "It's strange sleeping in the same bed, the three of us, again. Just like nothing happened."

"I'd give almost anything to go back to then. But of course, you're happy on your island paradise," Azula says, getting out of bed. Ty Lee takes two involuntary steps backwards. "I wouldn't want to crush that by awakening anything."

"I don't want to think about this," Ty Lee says, stepping further back. Azula does not move, but the gap between them feels smaller than it is.

"That's what you're good at, isn't it? Not thinking too hard," Azula says gently but there is something different in her familiar eyes. They do not look like the ones that haunt Ty Lee's dreams.

"We're all strangers now, aren't we?" Ty Lee asks, glancing at the door, wanting to escape but her feet are glued to the floor.

"Of course we are. People don't stay the same. And they never want the same thing at the same time. I think we all learned that the hard way," Azula purrs, fully closing the space between them, her bare feet dragging against the cold wooden floor like a walking corpse.

Ty Lee kisses her and already feels regret surging through her. She tried to grow up and apart from her past.

"I want to remember you as what you were, not what you've become," Ty Lee breathes and Azula does not respond, she just returns their lips to each other.

It does not hurt to hear or say. It is just a fact. Just the truth.

Azula slips her hand behind Ty Lee's back, as if this is easy for her. The acrobat does not know what she is getting herself into. Azula is a dragon; she chews people up and spits them out for fun. Azula has lost it and is unstable and dangerous and broke Ty Lee's heart over and over again.

But she leans in to Azula, dragging her face away and kissing the princess's neck. It sends a shiver through Azula. She steps backwards, against the wall. Ty Lee is barely connected to her, although her clothes stick to her from being pressed against Azula. Azula's fingers barely touch Ty Lee's hand as she pulls her to the side of the room. Like the beckon of a monster dragging a sailor to their death.

Their tongues intertwine, hips against each other. She pushes her up, against the wall with the strength that is always surprising to Azula. She pretends it means nothing as her body shakes and scrapes against the wall. Gasp and a moan and Ty Lee is trying not to drown.

Her legs wrap around Ty Lee's waist with such ease that the acrobat feels out of sorts.

But when the door opens, Ty Lee nearly drops her.

And Ty Lee is hypocrite again. Azula lingers on her as Mai walks in slowly and kicks the door shut behind her. _Don't give in. Don't give in to Azula, no matter how hard her nails are digging into you._ Ty Lee is pulling away but she clearly does not want to and Azula slides to her feet.

Even though she touches the floor now she still feels suspended.

One hand is outstretched, a dare. Ty Lee swallows, sitting on the bed with her shirt torn open and watching the scene play out in terror.

"Don't you think it's a little unfair to play games with mortals," Mai says sarcastically, examining Azula's invitation with hesitation.

"You sell yourself short. I think it's a game between gods," Azula purrs, making the entire thing sound like one of her speeches, and Mai takes her hand with a self-satisfied smirk.

"I'm not falling for that. I want to do this. You're not really the best..." But Mai is cut off by her lips. Azula slips through the room like a ghost. And Mai thinks for a moment that maybe she is. That this is one long hallucination and she is going to wake up in her bed wet and remorseful.

Azula drags Mai on top of her.

Mai does not know why she gives in, nor why another's hands are on her. It feels surreal and strange, as if their lips are both memories and their touch is invisible.

Ty Lee can feel Azula's bones as she runs her hands across and feels the overwhelming guilt. Her body shakes and not quite with pleasure.

And she would say, _you will get better_, if her mouth was not occupied with Mai's tongue.

But Azula would hate it, unlike how much she seems to enjoy Mai digging her fingers into her spine. Azula loses control for a moment as she is swept into the two of them. It is a strange embrace that she once knew but now feels strange. Like the first time doing something so screwed up.

Azula moans at Mai's motions, which are oddly practiced for someone who denied liking girls until her last breath. Ty Lee finds herself half on Azula's lap and this is messy and confusing and dark, as the sun dips entirely away and they are submerged in the darkness.

A cold night and sexual heat. They clash and make the hurricane that is saliva as Azula spits into Ty Lee's mouth and the uncertainty of whose hands are where.

It's messy by the end, like a tornado that swept logic away. They sleep together, hiding from each other weakly. No one wraps their arms around anyone, bodies spaced but close together after a lengthy union.

Ty Lee is awake all night, staring at the window.

Azula's breath is on her neck and she is trying to convince herself not to do this again.

Being involved with Azula and Mai is the unhealthiest thing she ever did. Far worse of a life choice than running away from wealth to join the circus.

This might be the worst mistake of her life, despite the deep, purring satisfaction within her.

She has never been more angry and confused.

* * *

><p>"You're definitely not over Zuko," Ty Lee says between yawns. She likes to make herself known in the morning and it has always tormented her two best friends. Mai's face is on the table and Azula has just come inside.<p>

"I am _so _over Zuko. It's been three years," Mai groans, her groggy voice muffled by the wood.

"How many dates have you been on?" Ty Lee asks.

"Five," Mai says and Azula laughs. "You shut up!"

Ty Lee gives Mai a sympathetic look. "That's kind of sad. You're _definitely _not over Zuko."

"Or maybe no one wants to date her," Azula says with a shrug, sitting down in a chair between the other two girls. "That's completely valid. I mean, who _would_?"

"A lot of people find me desirable, Azula," Mai says into the table.

Ty Lee chimes in, "I've been on more dates than I can count."

"So... ten," Azula says and Mai snickers. "Well, you're both disappointing aren't you? Mai can't start a relationship and Ty Lee can't keep one for more than a week. Mai is serious but not fun, Ty Lee is fun but not serious. I think you two are perfect for each other."

"Ugh," Mai groans and Azula smirks. "How many dates have _you _been on, huh?"

"I've never been on a date and I'm quite proud of that," Azula says, leaning back in her chair.

"No, you're afraid of social situations so you self sabotage any romantic encounters," Mai replies sharply and Azula shrugs.

"If you say so."

"We definitely went on dates," Ty Lee says, sounding incredibly defensive for someone who is claiming to loathe the idea of a romance with Azula. "There was the one in Ba Sing Se and the one in the Fire Nation and..."

"Not dates. Excursions. Or something. Completely platonic."

"With kissing and touching."

"Platonic kissing and touching."

"This is why we can't ever be together! Why are you so baffled that I didn't want to marry you?"

Mai groans again. This is escalating far out of control.

"Your outbursts are getting incredibly tiring," Azula says haughtily and Mai bangs her head on the table and stands up. "If your island paradise is so perfect, with your thousand dates and friends, then why are you so quick to scream about how you _hate _everyone?"

"Not _everyone_. You. Only you!" Ty Lee exclaims. Mai finds it off-putting. Ty Lee was always so... happy go lucky. And ninety percent of the time she is, until you rub her the wrong way and she flies off the handle.

"Azula, leave her alone," Mai says, shutting the curtains on the window and basking the kitchen in dull red light. "Both of you calm down."

"I am calm. I am not doing anything," Azula says, her eyes flashing.

"You're intentionally goading her into her crazy outbursts because they make you feel better about yourself," Mai sighs and Azula purses her lips, eyebrow twitching. "Now stop, or both of you go outside."

"You cannot tell me what I can and can't do or dictate when I go outside," Azula says, digging her nails into the table.

"This is my house and I'm letting you live here illegally. I'm basically committing treason with nothing in return so when I say to do something, maybe you should do it," Mai says calmly and Azula blinks, startled.

Ty Lee says, "Well, you are getting _something _in return," with a small scowl.

Mai ignores her, Azula stands up, and the acrobat is left alone at the table.

* * *

><p>Azula sits on a chair on the back porch of the house. She has a thousand yard stare with her hollow golden eyes. Her mind is worlds away from right here and now. And Mai feels lukewarm and as if she should be doing something but she has no idea what. She walks to the porch, her bare feet poked by the volcanic gravel.<p>

"I don't want to hear about it," Azula says before Mai has spoken. Mai chews on the inside of her cheek to avoid saying anything she regrets. "None of my decisions have ever been easy. Don't act like it's so _significant _that we got closer. Unless my version of events is skewed."

"That wasn't romantic," Mai says and Azula scoffs. "You were pretty quick to forgive me as soon as I had something you wanted."

"I said I don't want to hear about it," Azula repeats, but her tone is significantly less confident.

"Maybe we should all leave. Probably living in the same house together is just going to lead to a double murder suicide."

"And nobody would notice that we were gone," Azula says softly and Mai realizes she has struck deeper than she intended to. "They wouldn't find us until we were rotting."

"People would miss you if you died."

"Nobody missed me for three years. The only person who was effected by my vanishing now can't sit in the same room as me without combusting," Azula says calmly, coldly. She feels like a cold steel knife, bloodless but desperately looking for flesh to sink into.

"I'm just saying that this is a disaster. How are we going to start over when we're all living in the past?" Mai says and Azula shrugs.

"I think it's interesting. We're here, in a bubble. The rest of the world doesn't exist. I think this is a good place to start over. I'm not angry. You should be talking to her," Azula says, leaning back in the chair. Positions of power, rehearsed and learned in lessons about negotiations. Everything she is has been written in military textbooks.

"I'm talking to you because..."

"Because?"

"Never mind."

"Of course. We had _nothing_. You did it all because you thought you had to. Whatever you do, don't contradict the princess." Silence. Mai shifts her weight between her feet and relishes in the pain of the small sharp stones. "The doctors said I acted out sexually as a youth because of my oppressive and abusive childhood. That sure sounds like someone else I know."

Mai does not want to say that Azula is right. She wants to pretend it was something more because it justifies it to herself. It justifies her tumultuous relationship with Zuko, if her heart was in multiple places at once. But the minute her body hit the wall of the prison cell with Ty Lee, she realized that it was just sex to at least one of them.

"Maybe we should take over another city," Mai says, desperately trying to change the course of the conversation.

"Well, haven't you become the overachiever," Azula says with a smirk. "I don't think conquering whatever _this _town is would be incredibly difficult. You could probably buy it without making a dent in your stacks of gold."

"I wouldn't buy it. Do you remember how I used to steal things. Things I didn't even need, even though I could afford them," Mai says with a slight hint of laughter in her voice.

"You want to upgrade from stealing headbands to stealing cities? Maybe we _should _start small," Azula says, smiling faintly.

"It takes a village to raise a child; it takes three children to take over Ba Sing Se," Mai says and Azula laughs. A real laugh. The first Mai has heard in a long time. Sometimes she forgets Azula is human. "Why do you only smile with half of your mouth?"

Mai walks closer to Azula. She can almost feel the summer air get colder as she walks to the princess. Azula does not move, as still as a statue. Mai always imagined there would be statues of her, not bounty posters.

"Here, I'm just going to..." Mai says, pushing up the other side of Azula's lips. Surprisingly, she seems to play along. "Oh, that's frightening, I'm going to put it back now."

"People are intimidated by my lips," Azula says, replacing _smile _with what her bones want her to stay.

"I'm not," Mai says, and they are both struck by the same memory.

_"You miscalculated. I guess I love Zuko more than I fear you."_

Mai presses her lips against Azula's with a vivacity the princess did not think she had. It is to kill the memories and it works.

They pull apart before it escalates. Before the frozen Azula burns in a glacial fire. Before Mai picks a side in the eternal war between her two best friends. Her two make-shift lovers.

"This makes me..." Mai does not want to say anything. "You have nice lips."

"Did you almost admit to having feelings?" Azula mocks with a smirk.

"Not nice enough lips to go around making comments like that. Unless you decide to go home to Zuko, you don't have any power."

"I think I could make you disagree."

"I'll see you tonight." Mai chuckles to herself and walks back into the house. It was going to go too far. But what is too far anymore?

_"No, you miscalculated. You should have feared me more."_

Azula could make an ice cold ocean from her wasted tears.


	3. striped carnation

**Chapter Three**

**Striped Carnation - (**_**I cannot be with you**_**)**

* * *

><p>"I found a dartboard and my parents' expensive liquor," Mai says, clutching both in her arms. She looks oddly proud of her armful of stolen items, but Azula and Ty Lee are unimpressed.<p>

"Living dangerously, Mai," Azula replies snidely.

"It'll be fun." Mai screws up her face in aggravation, but the expression quickly fades.

"Someone will get pierced through the eye with a dart," Azula says and Ty Lee squints at her.

"You don't have to play. No one is _forcing _you!" Ty Lee exclaims before touching her mouth as if the words were not hers. Mai cringes uncomfortably and tries to get the dartboard to stick to the wall. She hands Azula the two crystal bottles of alcohol and lays the darts out on the table.

"I think we know who's going to win," Azula says, setting down the bottles. "I think I'll pick the next game."

"And change the rules when you start losing," Mai chuckles with a cocked eyebrow and Ty Lee is startled that Azula just smirks in response. "We're going to play darts and then we're going to drink and try to have actual fun instead of just... sleep deprivation."

"That's a nice word for it, isn't it?" Azula says, swirling her finger around the cap of one of the bottles. "_Sleep deprivation_. Almost makes it not sound so fucked up."

"You're going to win, Mai," Ty Lee says, looking unimpressed by the activities. "We could probably find something _way _more interesting to do. Why don't we go into the town and buy quaint countryside things? And get dinner that isn't groceries picked up by Mai."

"Well, we're harboring a fugitive. Not that these _rural _people are going to recognize their princess, but I'm not risking it. I thought you didn't want to go to prison," Mai says, as if reciting a dull textbook, and manages to make the dartboard stick to the wall.

"I think we're vying for second place, Ty," Azula says, cocking an eyebrow as she pops open a bottle with her grotesquely long thumbnail.

Pause. Ty Lee seems distracted, or perhaps _thinking _before belatedly saying, "What did you just call me?"

"By your name. Unless you've decided to change that to a water peasant name too. Forgive me for being so inconsiderate of your culture," Azula sighs, pouring the liquor into the glasses and not even looking at her old flame who now heats up her bed.

"No, you called me... you haven't called me that since before I left for the circus."

"I didn't notice," Azula lies with a small shrug.

Ty Lee studies her for a moment, looking confused, and then picks up one of the darts and pretends to be weighing it in her hands. Pet names are gone, just like Mai and Azula are. To Ty Lee, they're just people she once knew, and strangers who are broiling her alive.

Mai tries not to think too much about what Azula is playing. The games that are about to start are far more complex than darts. Ty Lee was never clever enough to catch up, and Mai never cared enough to try to play at the princess's level.

Tactics, strategy; love is word that makes less sense than both of them to Azula.

People have loved her. But she has always been under the impression that no one ever has. Mother issues, or something. Abandonment issues, definitely. But Mai isn't here to cure Azula like Zuko so wanted to, like doctors wanted to, and the Avatar wanted.

It's Azula's journey and she will _never _let herself be guided by someone else.

For all of those people, changing her was about making her like everybody else. They assume they can just pick up the pieces of her shattered mind and put them together into a shape that doesn't exist. Changing people should be about nudging them towards finding themselves.

It's Azula journey and she will _never _let herself be guided by someone else.

That's where Ty Lee went wrong.

They play darts. It's like they're pretending to be friends again. Laughing, talking. The bad times don't exist anymore as the game goes on and finally ends with two dismal scores, as Ty Lee struck out early on. Azula held on until she attempted to top Mai's bulls eye's and wound up being wiped from the board as well. And then the darts don't exist anymore; and nor do the games that they have been playing in this house.

"Do you remember when Mai got caught stealing?" Ty Lee laughs, leaning against the counter. Mai is plucking all of the darts off of the corkboard and the floor.

"I don't know why she had that problem. She had enough money to buy a couple colonies," Azula says, smirking. She looks incredibly amused by the memory.

Some memories don't hurt.

"I did it to put some excitement in my incredibly boring life," Mai sighs, feeling exhausted. "I'm going to sleep before you recount all of my most humiliating moments."

"Thank you, Azula, for saving me from getting my hand cut off!" Azula calls after her as she walks towards the master bedroom. Mai waves her hand dismissively as she closes herself inside.

"Do you remember how you got us into that bar by saying we were on official Fire Nation business?" Ty Lee laughs, looking not angry while talking to Azula for the first time since she arrived.

They walk into the living room, which is over-decorated for the sake of showing guests just _how _rich Mai's family was. The acrobat sits on the fireplace as it burns, sweating and disproportionately overheated. The night is ice cold as the days are too warm, and the evenings a muggy in-between drenched in humidity and insects.

Azula walks across the room, clutching an empty glass, and sits by the fire. She feels heat around her body as she sits in the glow of the fire. Ty Lee looks at her with an expression Azula has never seen. How much someone can change in two years is startling.

"I never thought you could change," Azula says, trying to make it sound like an insult but the pain evident in her words. She sits beside Ty Lee, their knees touching, as she feels the heat consume her body. Her clothes start to stick to her back.

"It's not really that surprising," Ty Lee replies, more quietly than she has spoken to Azula for this entire week.

"Why are you so angry?"

"Would you like me to make a list?" Ty Lee says shrilly, her words always like wind-chimes.

"How about you start with one," Azula says as gently as she can, but still sounding harsh and cold.

The combination of hot and cold can only make tornadoes and hurricanes. But right now... right now is the calm before the storm.

"Do you ever feel like you're just not good enough?" Ty Lee asks and Azula is stunned. How much exactly Ty Lee hides behind plastic smiles and shallow comments and aura babble is always shocking.

Azula hesitates. There are two answers. One a truth, one a lie. And that is Azula's eternal conflict.

"Of course I do," she says, opting for honesty. It is a first. "The expectations on me have been more than I can take once or twice. No matter what I did or how good at got at things, people always expected me to be better than I was."

"You've always made me feel so inadequate."

"I get that a lot," Azula responds icily. She looks at the fire and finds little solace in it. "But it shouldn't be true. I'm crazy... you're crazy... she's crazy. We're all crazy. And now we're here together like this is some kind of vacation."

"I'm not sorry."

"I never asked you to be. Of course, it would be nice, but I won't _demand _it or anything."

She broke her crown but still plays to be a queen. She tries to burn and burst, but she is still a crazy little girl.

"Everybody gets betrayed eventually," Ty Lee says and Azula scoffs.

"Justifications, justifications." She examines her fingernails and Ty Lee sees how her hands shake. They never did before. "I've never done that to you. In fact, after all you did to me, I offered for you to come with me."

Ty Lee blinks for a little too long. Azula takes a deep breath and the fire shifts with it. The room glows blue instead of a dim orange.

"People don't always want the same thing at the same time," Ty Lee offers feebly, looking unsure of her words as she speaks.

"I'm always surprised when you say intelligent things," Azula says, releasing the flames in a brief burst of rich yellow light, and Ty Lee raises an eyebrow. A compliment from Azula tends to also involve an insult. That is something she didn't miss. "But I disagree. People _never _want the same thing at the same time."

Azula stands up, proud of herself for getting through a conversation without it devolving to a screaming match between them. Her skin shifts from hot to cold as the flames flicker oddly, half controlled by the princess.

"Wait," Ty Lee says hesitantly. Azula does not turn around but she stops walking. "You're good enough for me. I just wasn't good enough for you."

There are two answers. One a truth, one a lie. Azula chooses the easy one.

"Don't beat yourself up over it," Azula says. "Nobody is really good enough for me."

She lied.

* * *

><p>Azula's dream is different tonight.<p>

They are usually recurring, with a mix and match of the aspects. There are the memories, pure and there, that should have been repressed but instead haunt her. Then there are the ones where she is trying to stem the flow of a volcanic eruption as everything she has ever been melts into the lava. Dreams of fighting her father and he turns into shadows that suffocate her with invisible hands, pressing on her neck until she faints. The memories hurt the most. The others are strange and grotesque, nightmares that only her mind could imagine.

But her dream is different tonight.

She dreams of the cliff outside of the summer home she is hiding in. And she stands on it, looking out and trying to reach something that has fallen into the water. She falls, and when she tries to catch herself, cannot. One hand reaches up to the two people hovering over her, but they don't move.

And her body snaps in half on the rocks beneath, her friends still standing there like statues, but with small smiles on their faces.

She wakes up gasping and trying to control herself. The masks she wears around them are going to be ripped off at some point, but for now she can pretend to be normal. Pretend that she hasn't lost anything, including her dignity, her power and her mind.

Betrayal stings worse than any wound. Any training injury when she was forced to practice until her bones broke.

_"It's unfathomable what you went through. The physical and emotional stress is enough to traumatize anyone."_

_Azula does not respond._

_She will not acknowledge these people who claim to understand her._

_Who lie when they say they want to help her._

Azula slips out of the bed, trying not to wake either Mai or Ty Lee. She opens the window, desperate for air and the icy nighttime breeze blows in and cools her sweat.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Ty Lee, arriving at the worst of times, of course. Azula purses her lips and continues to stare out of the window. "It's great to talk about feelings. I promise."

"I don't have any feelings," Azula says slowly, not sure if even she believes the lie. "I don't know why you expect me to."

"What did you dream about?" Ty Lee asks, feeling warm in a gooey way instead of an angry way.

"My dreams are boring," Azula lies and Ty Lee pretends to believe her. "I'm more curious about what you've been doing without my obsessive control of you."

Barbed questions, fake compliments, trap conversations. Ty Lee does not respond. She purses her lips, holding her tongue for listing all the reasons Azula does not deserve her breath.

"I'm going to find water," Ty Lee says, walking away and leaving Azula behind. The princess clutches the windowsill and stares out over the cliff.

"Follow her," comes a voice behind the disgraced princess. And Azula jumps, turning around with her hands ablaze. Mai puts her arms up in surrender. "She's dumb and romantic; she'll probably swoon or something."

"She doesn't want me like she used to. We all grew up and I'm not going to force her to... whatever. If we want to fuck each other that's fine, but as soon as feelings get involved we are going to _destroy _each other," Azula says with a startling earnestness.

"I want you more than I want Zuko," Mai remarks and Azula examines her for signs of lying. She isn't, unless Azula has gotten rusty with time and age. "If she didn't care about you she wouldn't be so angry. You get her hot one way or another."

"And you're just perpetually lukewarm," Azula says breathily before exiting the room. Mai stands alone, exhausted. She woke up in the dead of the night for absolutely no gain.

Azula follows her. She wouldn't tell Mai, wouldn't let her think she is winning. Azula possibly should not view her relationship as a competition, but for her, everything is a competition. Ty Lee is looking at water with displeasure, the moonlight shining on her back and illuminating her face in shadow and light.

"I shouldn't have said those things," Azula says and Ty Lee looks up, looking as shocked as if Azula just punched her in the face.

Ty Lee knows she is lying, but it just feels easier to believe her. It always felt easier to believe her. And maybe she is trying to make amends, as incapable of empathy as she is. This summerhouse feels surreal, and the moments she shares with old lovers feel as strange and cloudy.

"What do you want from me?" Ty Lee asks hesitantly. Even in her rage of late she has never _really _spoken up to Azula. She never felt like she had the privilege that Mai did. Azula used her all the easier because of it and she only woke up a few years ago.

"Let's work out your anger," Azula says and Ty Lee rolls her eyes. "No, not like that. Fight me."

"Fight you?" Ty Lee raises her eyebrow, baffled.

"Go on. No bending, no chi blocking, hand to hand. That way no one gets hurt or has some kind of terrible flashbacks or anything. Respectively," Azula replies with a small smirk.

"We're never going to explain away the bruises," Ty Lee whispers.

"Easier to explain than love bites," Azula purrs and Ty Lee shrugs. She might as well punch Azula in the face with no repercussions.

Ty Lee walks forward as Azula shoves the sofa out of the way, gasping for breath as she does it. Ty Lee moves the coffee table and they stand in a wide space, the large windows behind them. Illuminated by moonlight, they ready themselves to dance.

"Alright, start," Azula says, running at Ty Lee. The acrobat barely dodges her, slipping to the side and catching herself with one hand. Azula immediately regains her balance and throws the first punch.

Ty Lee dodges it, but it scrapes the side of her cheek. And Ty Lee's assault in response sends Azula walking backwards, blocking with her arms. She doesn't fare as well without her bending. And Ty Lee is struggling to land punches without paralyzing her friend.

"Talk to me," Azula breathes as she grabs Ty Lee by the arm and throws her to the floor. Ty Lee pops up as Azula smashes down her foot. The princess falls, waving her hands to catch herself, and turns around as Ty Lee hits her on the shoulder.

"Would you rather discuss the weather or current political events," Ty Lee says and Azula is surprised at her smart reply. Maybe there is something behind her shallow exterior.

"Why did you say no?" Azula demands and Ty Lee swallows.

"I didn't want," gasp as she blocks Azula's blow, "to get tangled in you again. I wanted my own life, not the one you gave me."

"You really want to be oh so unique," Azula says and Ty Lee's next punch has strong passion behind it. Azula stumbles back but elbows Ty Lee in the gut in her rebound. "I don't care what you want. I don't."

"You're cold now. I mean you were always," block, punch, "a bitch but now you're an ice princess. You don't care about me or Mai or anybody. You don't even care if you live or die."

"I have a pretty strong will to live." Azula tries to throw Ty Lee to the floor but fumbles. She steps back to avoid a barrage of punches.

"No, I don't think you do. I think you're really confused and if I had come with you or anything I don't think I could've taken it. You need to sort yourself out before you try to elope with your old flame," Ty Lee says sharply and shrilly. Azula dodges twice. "You've never known what _you _wanted or who _you _were because your father controlled you. I mean, the only reason we were together was to defy him or to feel in control of whatever. You've never been Azula, you've always just been the hand of Fire Lord Ozai."

"Everybody's a shrink now," Azula says, stopping. Ty Lee hesitates, melting in place, burning with sweat. "I've heard it all. You're not going to change me. If you don't love me as I am you don't love me at all."

"That's a terrible lie," Ty Lee says and Azula reaches forward in a split second, flipping her to the floor. And Ty Lee has the winds knocked out of her as the princess looms over her. "What was _that_?" Ty Lee gasps between coughs and struggles at breath.

"Our break-up." And the princess walks away.

As morning comes, Azula is nowhere. And Ty Lee doesn't care, sitting and sipping tea alone at the table.

"Where's Azula?" is the first thing Mai asks. Of course. Of course.

"She broke up with me," Ty Lee says and Mai looks confused. "Not that we've been together since we were teenagers. But she broke up with me."

"She's not going to leave. It's not like she has somewhere else to go," Mai sighs, sitting at the table with her chin in her palm. "What did you do to piss her off so badly?"

"I told her that she needed to figure out who she was before she got involved with other people," Ty Lee says and Mai breathes in through her teeth.

"Probably best not to psychoanalyze her to her face," Mai says, but she shrugs. "If she doesn't come back in two hours we'll go look for her. She probably just needs to cool off."

"More than she already is?" Ty Lee asks, staring at her tea and losing interest in it. Mai frowns for a flicker of a heartbeat.

* * *

><p>Azula walks to the edge of the cliff. She is practicing, training as the lightning surges through her body. And then it stops. She tries to conjure it again, and she tries simple flames. Her fingers refuse to light and she starts to panic. Her heart jumps into her throat.<p>

Someone touches her back, pulling her close. "I can't let you go," Mai says, dragging her into an embrace. Azula feels herself suffocating, her throat clogging with ash.

She pushes against Mai, trying to bend, trying to burn her as she holds her in a grip that feels like it is popping her ribs. Azula breaks away, although her bending is useless and absent.

And she runs, as Mai grabs after her. She runs and dives off of the cliff with no regard for herself. Instead of hitting the rocks, her bones cracking and snapping as she imagined as she started falling, she plunges into the water. It is ice cold and she shakes as her clothes drag her down.

Her lungs fill with water as her fire slips away from her. Sinking, sinking, and finally she inhales water. For a moment, she almost thinks she can breathe it. But then she feels herself slowly slip into unconsciousness and fall down, down, down into the depths of the ocean.

Azula wakes, gasping, touching her throat. She is not drowning, she is curled on the sofa with an expensive blanket draped over her. A blanket she does not remember putting on herself before she fell asleep. Slowly, she sits up and tries to make sense of the dream.

The cliff is in all of them. Her dreams have changed and now she sees herself falling again and again. And in her dreams, she intends to. A bit _melodramatic_, killing herself by jumping off of a cliff. But it is her intent, and no one tries to save her. No one tries to stop her.

Nobody would notice if she died, or if she vanished off of the face of the Earth.

Mai and Ty Lee certainly wouldn't help her. They have betrayed her too many times.

Like yesterday. Azula lights her fingers and is relieved to see the glimmering blue.

Like yesterday. Yesterday's feelings clogging up Azula's breath and pulling her down. She should forget them and break free of them, but she never can. At least not here as she rekindles her relationship with Mai and Ty Lee.

Maybe she should leave. But the truth is, she does not think she could set foot outside of the door.

She believes she is getting attached to them.

It is easier to be quick to sex and quick to push others away.

But Azula's life has never been easy.

* * *

><p>In the morning, Mai and Ty Lee pretend yesterday never happened. That Azula never ran away for a few hours, only to slink back with a slight tint of ruddy humiliation on her cold, pale cheeks. And Azula does not reveal her nightmares about suicide.<p>

"Why didn't I run away before?" Azula says laughingly, clambering down the rocks onto a small beach with coal black sand. Mai slides down next to her, wincing, as Ty Lee jumps down like a child skipping over rope. "It really doesn't have any downsides."

"I ran away once," Mai comments, gazing at the water with distaste. "That water is probably very cold. I ran away once and I came back home after an hour."

"Life on the streets of the Fire Nation Capitol Upper North-Side a little too rough for you?" Azula says and Mai glares at her briefly.

"It's hard to run away successfully," Mai continues with a shrug. "It requires a lot of planning. You can't just get in a fight with your parents and climb out the window."

"That's essentially what I did and nobody found me for ─ what has it been? ─ three years. It was pure chance that you showed up," Azula says.

"You even make running away into a competition. But running away as basically an adult doesn't count. I mean, running away at twelve or thirteen years old," Mai sighs, sitting down on a rock. Azula touches her toe to the water hesitantly. "That's challenging."

"I ran away when I was thirteen," Ty Lee corrects and Mai rolls her eyes. This is impossible.

"You told your parents you were going. They just let you because your parents were incredible push-overs with spare kids," Mai says sharply and Ty Lee cringes.

"I thought about running away often," Azula says, walking away from the water. She changed her mind about _swimming_. "I had a bag packed and everything."

"How long did you have a runaway bag?" Mai asks, a smile creeping onto her face.

"Since I was eleven? Maybe twelve. I think it was still there last time I saw my bedroom," Azula says, adjusting her hair in the ocean wind.

"So what was your plan? You always have an elaborate plan for everything you do," Mai says, leaning forward. She actually is quite interested in this.

"Well, I would have to wait until a school holiday. Then, I would lock myself in my room, wait until morning ─ because leaving in the dead of the night is just suspicious ─ and then I would start heading west until I hit somewhere decent. I had maps and money and a variety of important things. One _little _problem was that I was the only person who was eligible to rule the nation ─ Empire? Is it an empire? ─ so there was at least a sixty percent chance people would look for me," Azula explains with incredibly ridiculous gravitas.

"What was your dream?" Ty Lee asks, directly addressing Azula. The princess is surprised, but tries not to show it.

"My what?"

"Your running away dream. You have to have something to be running to," Ty Lee continues, seeming not angry at Azula for the first time since their fight.

"I didn't really think of that. I just wanted out; it didn't matter where," Azula says with a shrug. "Do I look like I had a dream I was running to now? I'm just... always trapped. No matter where I turn, _trapped_."

"That almost makes you sound romantic and free-spirited," Mai says, not wanting to delve into the multitude of walls that contained Azula for years. Ty Lee looks disappointed for a moment at the change in conversation, but she smiles and walks to the water.

"Almost," Azula replies casually. "So, maybe we didn't run away as kids, but we all ran away as adults."

"We did promise to run away together one day," Mai says, gesturing at Azula and Ty Lee. "It just happened at a very belated time."

"At least no one will come looking for us this time," Azula says, half-serious.

"Nope, probably not." Mai looks at the water and Ty Lee dancing in it. She seems happy, her heat radiating and blocking out the icy water.

Azula has her clothes wrapped tightly around herself, the wind billowing through her hair. Mai looks between them and wonders when exactly she lost her way.

Because Mai never exactly imagined herself _here_ when she thought about her life.

* * *

><p>AN: The scene between Azula and Ty Lee is inspired by Shepard and Vega's therapy with punches scene in _Mass Effect 3_. I didn't use any dialogue from it, but I can't take credit how perfect people punching each other while talking about their feelings is for Azula.


	4. meadow saffron

**Chapter Four**

**Meadow Saffron - (**_**my best days have passed)**_

* * *

><p>"Why were we never together?" Mai asks out of nowhere. The level of emotional confrontation in this house is strange to Ty Lee. None of them ever talked about their feelings until this summer fade. "It was always about her."<p>

"You liked Zuko, I guess? We worked better as friends," Ty Lee says hesitantly. "I like you a lot but, you had him and, you know."

"I don't know. You were willing to die for my life and we never even kissed without her around," Mai says placidly, although her words are strong. "Unless you count the Boiling Rock but I don't think that counts."

"I don't like to think about that," Ty Lee says softly, picking at her fingernails. They are filled with dirt from warrior training on the muddy island. "Those are bad memories."

"You recently lectured me about how there were good times," Mai says, trying to figure her out and failing. Ty Lee shrugs.

"I'm jumping in between right now. I don't know what I am anymore. It was all going so smoothly until you two decided to lure me here," Ty Lee says, trying to inject some form of compassion in her words and failing. "I don't think I'm ready for this."

"I don't think there's a such thing as being ready for this," Mai says with a mirthless chuckle.

They sit there, half staring at each other, half trying not to. The moment is tense in a way that Mai has never experienced with Ty Lee. She was always shallow, always easy to deal with. They would sit and Mai would help the poor girl untangle her hair or do her math homework and their friendship never blossomed.

Even in the end, even when Ty Lee made her choice, it never blossomed except for one frantic night that was angry and confused. It was heated against Mai's lukewarm life as her heart was still surging with adrenaline from facing off with the only person she ever trusted.

"I hate making decisions," Ty Lee says softly, as if they can just have casual conversation in this house. Mai looks at her, giving her a chance. "I really do. They can effect your whole life. Forever. And you _never _get to try again."

Mai walks towards her, sitting beside her. She did promise that she would try to _care_. It's undeniably difficult as she awkwardly rubs Ty Lee's back as she looks perhaps about to cry. But Ty Lee doesn't; she remains composed even though Mai can see she is strained in ways her coping mechanisms of smiles and handstands cannot deal with.

_Ty Lee focuses on the pain. Everything else is surreal, everything else is faker than her. It's a familiar searing sensation she cannot explain that well. It feels like being burned by steel, which is fitting for the reasons that she slides and sinks and nobody notices._

_Just because she wears make-up and always says it will be okay in the end. Because she can be in social situations without panicking. It doesn't mean she's not crazy. She is pretty sure she is._

_She is in the middle of the woods, running a blade halfheartedly across her veins. They show through her skin too much, bulging. But she's just supposed to be okay all the time._

"I'm alright, Mai. Don't look at me like that. Have I ever been down for long?" Ty Lee says, smiling at her. She is screaming behind her eyes; she is the night in the woods after hunting the Avatar, not even knowing how she is supposed to make herself hurt but trying anyway.

She can't even do that.

"You're not alright," Mai says with a surprising vivacity. "None of us are. That's why we're here. And not out there."

"I like it out there. I _do_. My life is content and I am fine with it. I'm not going to be broken down by your misery and Azula's... whatever it is she does," Ty Lee says and Mai just takes all the blame. That's what she specialized in ─ knives and letting people blame their pain on her.

Maybe that's why she did what she did with Azula.

Maybe that explains what she is about to do with Ty Lee.

"We didn't get together because we didn't have the guts. We prefer to take things lying down than take action. I'm... me. And you're... you. And that's what we've always been," Mai says, not putting a hint of emotion in her words, but they are somehow charged with them. Something in her eyes.

And on the eighth day of isolation, Ty Lee asks, "Make me feel alive."

The kiss has no hesitation. It isn't as if they don't know what to do, and why they are doing it makes sense at the time. Mai's hand is behind Ty Lee's back, holding her in place. She doesn't feel like she's slipping away like Azula does; she isn't ethereal, she is raw and bright and bold to the point of being annoying.

They are opposites. But Ty Lee slips out of her clothes, fumbling frantically with uncomfortably fingers. They are beautiful, and they are together and Ty Lee undoes Mai with relative ease. At least her clothes. She doesn't make much of an expression except occasionally gasping for breath.

A war of both, unsure who will fall down. Their legs intertwine as they are in a far too passionate wrestling match. Ty Lee winds up falling. She gives up, just wanting to be in bliss. Here, here with her everything feels like it used to be. She likes the bad girls better than the ones she spends her every moment with. Like a troupe of damned performers; not dangerous.

Her nails dig into Ty Lee's skin, black against peachy. In her flush of her racing heart and surging blood it is grey against pink, which is almost humorous but neither of them has the time or the ability to say anything about it. A slip of the tongue like a lizard before mutually deciding against it.

This was supposed to happen, but it doesn't happen dramatically. It just is there, but better than Ty Lee ever has known. Mai kisses her navel and she realizes that tears are pouring from her eyes. She is happy right now; she isn't in pain. But they tumble and drip onto her ears.

She quickly forgets her body's strange reaction as she feels like there is nothing else in the world but ecstasy. Mai pulls away from her, still supporting herself with her hands on Ty Lee's body like an erotic balancing act.

"Let me do you," Ty Lee says, half there, half still in the middle of convulsing or something. Her eyes lulled like a fool and she blushes, as they slip up again.

But before Ty Lee can slip off the rest of Mai's underwear, something crashes loudly behind them.

They are ripped out of reverie like ringing bells in the middle of a dream.

A good one. The first good one any of them have had in years.

"I didn't mean it," Ty Lee says out of some insane reflex. Like flinching with something thrown at you, which is what just happened.

"Oh, stop it," Mai says, slipping her clothes on and not looking as terrified and burning as Ty Lee.

And Mai entirely forgot that Ty Lee has associated sex with guilt since she first experienced it. And now her skin is red and her body trembling with twisting regret. It was the best moment of her life, but it was wrong and she is about to be told just how wrong it is.

"What is that? What are you doing?" finally escapes Azula's lips after being speechless and clutching a broken expensive war artifact. She examines the broken glass in her hand and the blood that runs down to her elbow and tosses it away. She can still feel slivers of glass in her hands.

"This is going to start a war," Mai murmurs and neither of them hears her.

But Azula freezes over again. Her rage was as evident as the strangled roar of a dying dragon, but now she looks with cold eyes of someone who has detached entirely.

"It's your choice," Azula says, the emphasis in her words wounding the naked girl with eyes like saucers sitting on the sofa. "I'm leaving."

"You're overreacting," Mai says, grabbing Azula's arm. A hand collides with her face, making her stumble on her heels. Her cheek stings with the marks of nails.

And Azula is gone before Mai can say a word.

"We hurt her bad," Ty Lee whispers, finding her clothes and trying to mask her body. "I can't take this negativity anymore."

"So you're leaving now too?" Mai asks, unsure why everyone has just flown off the handle. It was embarrassing to be caught in the act, but it will fade in mere minutes.

"I don't know. I don't know anything. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it with you," Ty Lee says, her voice in a million different tones as her mind is confused and baffled and burning. She runs towards the bathroom and Mai can hear her vomiting.

Mai looks in the living room mirror, the one that exists simply to reflect the vanity of this over decorated and overtly expensive house. Enough money to by a few colonies indeed.

She touches the marks on her face and realizes exactly how deep they are.

Making her decision about who needs her more, she walks to the bedroom and finds the door locked.

"Azula, please come out. It's not about you," Mai says, avoiding the things she truly wants to say. She does not know why she bends to Azula anymore. Nothing is stopping Mai from turning her over to the authorities.

"I don't care who it's about. I'm not coming out and you can't make me," Azula says coldly, although the words seem to belong to an indignant child.

"I'll go talk to her then. You're going to be okay," Mai says, walking away from the door and sighing. _Impossible_, completely impossible.

Maybe she is using them to restart her life. They're tools in her reconstruction of herself. But right now the tools are deadly weapons about to strike, with no regard for who they hit.

Mai walks to Ty Lee and finds her sitting by the sink and crying. Discomfort. Mai stands over her and Ty Lee simply shakes her head.

They ruined it all those years ago. The two of them got too close, too attached, and the dynamic of sex and hate disappeared. Love should not have been brought into it.

But they both did, whether they will admit it or not.

* * *

><p>Morning comes. Mai and Ty Lee sleep in separate guest rooms as Azula has not yet unlocked the door to the master bedroom. Which is exactly something Azula would do. Mai wakes up feeling frustrated and restless, and walks into the house to find something to eat.<p>

There is almost no food left in the house, as no one has gone to town since Mai found Azula living here. She absolutely does not want to leave Azula with Ty Lee, so she creeps across the lukewarm wooden floors and opens Ty Lee's door.

The acrobat is curled around a pillow, clutching it to her body as she lies in bed in a strange position. She whimpers slightly in her sleep and Mai feels terrible about it. There is no reason she _shouldn't _be allowed to sleep with Ty Lee, but it certainly has proven to be disastrous.

"Hey, Ty Lee, wake up," Mai says, walking in quietly and shaking her. Ty Lee jolts awake, almost as Azula does. "I need you to go into town and get food."

"Okay," Ty Lee chirps, pulling herself out of bed.

That was surprisingly easy. Maybe Ty Lee has taken a turn to being her regular self, which would alleviate Mai's concern for her. Anger, the sex they had, the guilt she feels; Ty Lee humming a cheerful tune as she dresses herself, examining her body in the mirror as she does, is relieving to Mai.

As soon as Ty Lee is dressed and her make-up is impeccable, she walks to Mai, who has not left. Mai realizes it abruptly and feels like some kind of pervert watching a girl get dressed. But Ty Lee touches her lips to Mai's.

Mai hesitates momentarily and then returns passionately. The morning glow over the beach basks their bodies in hot light as they kiss for longer than they should.

And so Ty Lee leaves, and Mai decides to try to get Azula to come out of their bedroom. But first, she needs some tea before she passes out from exhaustion. She is _definitely _not a morning person.

Finally, with green tea in hand, she walks to the bedroom and knocks on the door.

"It's unlocked," comes the icicle voice of the missing princess. Mai slides it open and walks in. She looks at Azula lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling and still dressed in the clothes she was wearing when she caught Mai and Ty Lee together. "Have you come to apologize or to tell me you're leaving?"

"I'm not running off with Ty Lee," Mai says, chuckling to herself. Azula's bitter expression reveals that she was not joking.

"We're supposed to be _together_. The three of us," Azula declares, her lips in a pout after speaking. Mai takes a deep breath through her nose.

"I know. But sometimes... we wind up in pieces. It's kind of hard to keep up a relationship between three people and not have occasional sex between only two of them." Silence. Azula does not look convinced. "It's not all threeesomes. It's not all together."

"It was when we were younger," Azula retorts coldly and Mai swallows some of her tea. Azula has a point, although she is in the wrong.

"When we were younger there was something wrong with us. We were twelve and thirteen and fourteen and we'd be together and it would just... happen. Like _playing prisoner_ and that kind of thing. It didn't evolve into anything more than abused children acting out sexually, as your doctors told you." Silence. Mai hopes Azula is not angry at her reference to the asylum, but the princess is listening to Mai intently. "We're adults now. And almost strangers. We don't play sexual games with no clue what real sex is like."

"So you two can be together and I can just leave. I might as well just turn myself in," Azula snarls and Mai closes her eyes and shakes her head. Azula is missing the point.

"I'm saying that this is uncharted water for the three of us. We decided to have a relationship again, but our relationship wasn't healthy or romantic. It takes some trial and error. And you should forgive us for doing something you've done." Pause. Azula does not throw anything or scream at Mai. This going better than she thought. "We slept together for weeks before Ty Lee came. And you slept with her after the Invasion."

Azula sighs and turns over, burying her face in the pillow. Mai studies the arch on her back without meaning to. She always liked playing prisoner with Azula, even if sometimes she didn't understand.

Mai touches her back, the exposed part above her red silk nightgown. A red and gold robe is discarded beside her, leaving her skin bare in most places. But her skin is cold.

Slipping onto the bed, unsure why she is doing this, Mai brushes Azula's hair to the side and kisses her neck. Azula takes a sharp breath. As Mai runs her fingers up and down Azula's spine, Azula realizes what a hypocrite she is.

As Mai turns Azula over, one leg attempting to straddle her, the princess pushes on her shoulders. Mai sits back on her knees, heated and wet and relatively confused by Azula stopping it. It was sensual and arousing, at least to Mai.

"We should save it for the three of us," Azula says and Mai's eyebrows shoot up. "If we're going to have a relationship, then we should be together. Not in pieces. Not anymore."

She is not asking or suggesting; she is ordering.

* * *

><p>That afternoon, the girls sit in the same room, close together but miles apart internally. Ty Lee is occasionally making blithe and shallow remarks, before blushing as Mai gives a halfhearted reply and Azula does nothing, sitting on the window seat and staring out at the blue and green ocean.<p>

"You know who asked me on dates a lot?" Mai says, trying to break the uncomfortable silence.

"Zuko?" Azula offers with a shrug. She tries to look as if she does not care, but clearly she does. Always was a possessive bitch.

Ty Lee thinks possessive Azula is the hottest Azula. Well, unless she is actually on fire. That's probably the hottest Azula. Hmm...

"Ty Lee!" Azula snaps and Ty Lee glances up, terrified. "Mai asked you a question."

"Oh, I was thinking." Laughter from her two friends. "You two shut up. What's your question, Mai?"

"She asked you why people think she's a lesbian," Azula says, looking amused by Ty Lee being so flustered and flushed. But Ty Lee smiles at the thought of that. "I think people think you're a lesbian because sometimes you have sex with women. But, what do I know?"

"Hmm," Ty Lee begins, leaping from her perch with grace. She walks to Mai and pretends to study her intently. "Well, your nails are too impractical. That makes you seem _less _like a lesbian."

"My nails are impractical? Have you seen Azula's hands?" Mai says, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, but she makes up from impracticality with sexy. And also it's just to show people she's rich and that's generally just a sexual invitation."

"I... that's not true." Azula looks aghast and confused. Mai thinks it's kind of cute. "It's for ripping out people's throats."

"So, then your nails have a practical purpose," Mai says with a shrug.

"Yes," Azula replies begrudgingly. She was hoping for _Mai _to be analyzed to the point of humiliation, not _her_.

"But you know that you would get laid more often if you clipped them," Mai says, smiling slightly.

"Not happening," Azula says regally, eyebrows up as she looks down her nose at Mai.

"They've actually gotten kind of terrifying without slaves to groom them. They're going to like, grow back into your fingers. Or maybe you'll stab your eye out in your sleep," Mai says as Ty Lee prods at her. "Ouch. Stop it."

Ty Lee clears her throat. "I think that people think you're a lesbian because you kinda just look like one."

"That's your in depth analysis? I mean anyone could tell that from looking at her," Azula says, laughing in the most degrading way Ty Lee can imagine. She is five seconds away from punching Azula in her smug face, but she calms herself.

"Maybe it's a sign," Ty Lee says with a shrug.

"A sign that I subconsciously want to be a lesbian even though I had sex with Zuko a lot of times."

"That is your only excuse every single time. Did you even have sex with Zuko?" Azula asks, leaning back in her chair. Mai blinks at her.

"I have had lots of sex with Zuko."

"Hmmm." Azula touches her finger to her lips.

"What?"

"Hmmm." She repeats herself.

"Stop _hmming_ at me." Mai groans. "I hate you both."

"I'm not doing anything!" Ty Lee exclaims, throwing her hands up. "She's the one _hmming _at you. I'm only telling you that you look like a lesbian and maybe you should try to wear some not depressing make-up and like some earrings or something. And stop dominating men."

"Hmmm."

"You two are mean, vindictive people," Mai sighs, setting her chin on her hand.

"So what else is new?" Ty Lee asks, laughing blithely. So much confusion, Mai cannot even process it.

"Hmmm."

"I am about to strangle you, princess," Mai says and Azula shifts entirely. Her superiority suddenly fades and Mai sits back slightly. Ty Lee looks in abject horror.

"If you're going to kill me, Mai. _Don't _strangle me. That's my dying wish," Azula says, crossing her legs but not regaining her royal composure.

"Not, stop killing me? Just don't strangle me is your dying wish?" Mai asks, trying to make this into a joke. It isn't working.

"My absolute worst fear is to suffocate," Azula says with a shrug. But the cavalier motion does not mask her evident anxiety. Just _thinking _about being strangled is clearly upsetting her.

"I'm really afraid of the dark," Ty Lee offers feebly, before realizing she sounds stupid. "So why are you afraid of being strangled?"

"I just have been more than once and it's terrifying," Azula says calmly, with that cold, thousand yard stare that has always frightened both Mai and Ty Lee. "Just helpless. It's a terrible way to die and I would only wish it on someone who _really _wronged me."

"Who would be dumb enough to try to throttle someone who could burn them alive with a single motion?" Mai asks and Ty Lee starts stepping backwards. The acrobat sits down and pulls a pillow over her chest, as if it can protect her.

Azula hesitates, clearly weighing her odds. "My father."

Ty Lee quickly interjects, "I have this recurring nightmare about walking past things and they all burn and then all my friends and family just burn up like paper and I'm just left there alone surrounded by ashes."

Azula blinks at her. Mai laughs and gets a glare from Ty Lee in response.

"I just was extremely vulnerable to you," Ty Lee snaps, crossing her arms tightly over her chest.

"That's probably my fault," Azula says with a shrug.

"Not everything in my life revolves around you!" Ty Lee exclaims and Azula recoils. "I do not dream about _you _every night!"

"Doesn't everyone dream about me every night?" Azula deflects with a haughty sigh. Mai narrows her eyes; this is getting gory.

"I heard that certain dreams have certain meanings," Mai says and Ty Lee loosens slightly. "Like if you lie a lot you dream about your teeth falling out or something."

Azula shakes her head, Mai sighs, and the princess says, "I only have one recurring dream that I've had since childhood. Most of my nightmares started fairly recently. I dream that I'm lying on the throne and there's something pressing against my ribs and it is trying to escape and I can like see my skin rising and falling. So I rip open my chest and a dragon flies out and I bleed to death."

"That's really weird and oddly specific. I just... dream about falling off of things. Sometimes I dream about being naked in public places," Mai says and Ty Lee groans.

"You're _so _boring, Mai. Azula, I think your dream symbolizes your desire to distance yourself from your family but your inability to," Ty Lee says and Mai cocks an eyebrow.

"Everybody's a shrink," Azula murmurs to herself and Ty Lee sighs.

"No, the dragon represents your family, and the throne, clearly. And when cut your family out, you're left to bleed to death," Ty Lee says and Azula breathes in slowly, contemplating it. It seems to check out.

"Don't say smart things. It's unnerving," Azula responds and Ty Lee frowns. _So _close to getting Azula to talk about her feelings.

"Okay, so, Ty Lee, your dreams are so much more _interesting_ than mine," Mai says and Azula seems intrigued. "I think that your dream _is _about Azula."

"Hmmm."

"Stop that!" Ty Lee snaps. Azula smirks. "I have never dreamed about Azula ever! Just, I don't know, boys!"

"You are such a bad liar," Mai remarks and Ty Lee pouts, chin jutting out like an annoyed toddler. "Alright, I'll admit that I have weird dreams sometimes. I have this one recurring dream where I'm carrying this basket of kittens through a swamp and I'm trying to protect them and then when I reach the edge of the swamp the kittens turn into a corpse."

"I think you just won most disturbing dream, and I gave myself a bare handed cesarean while pregnant with a dragon," Azula says with a smirk. Ty Lee furrows her brow.

"Why are we so fucked up?" Ty Lee asks, a genuine question.

"Because we're so attractive, intelligent, rich and powerful that it has to balance itself out by making us flat fucking crazy," Azula says and Mai rolls her eyes. "It's most likely because we all had very oppressive childhoods which is also incidentally why we have sex with each other."

Azula stares out of the window after their conversation. It went on for some time, the mockery, the love behind the barbed words. She thinks she might love them and it disturbs her. The sun has set and she looks at the indigo sea washing against the rocks.

She imagines her bones cracking against them.

She likes the image. It's almost arousing.

_Azula looks incredible tonight. She feels like she is on fire, and maybe she is. Her words may be cold but she is warm and bright and beautiful like a supernova. She walks through the pale moonlight after skipping out on the big party for Ba Sing Se. It has to be the _twelfth_._

_Ty Lee and Mai are with her, Mai pried away from Zuko as he started being interrogated about killing the Avatar. Azula winked at him as she walked out of the door with her friends._

_"Tonight is surprisingly fun for a stuffy political event," Ty Lee says, seizing a tree and hoisting herself into it. She hangs by her knees, braid swaying in the mild nighttime breeze._

_"I hated it," Mai replies, watching Azula step into the water. "Your feet are going to get muddy and gross."_

_"The state of my feet is not your concern," Azula replies and Mai walks to the edge, close to the water but not enough to get wet. _

_"You just never turn it off," Mai remarks, smirking. Azula narrows her eyes at her, unsure what she means and not liking it. "You're just commanding and regal _all _the time. It has to get tiring."_

_"This is just my normal," Azula says coldly, shrugging. Mai grabs her arm softly and there is a flicker of blue that fizzles out when her lips meet Mai's._

_Azula steps out of the water and barefoot onto the dew dusted grass. Ty Lee hangs on the tree for a moment, uncertain where this is going. She comes down when Mai is interlocked with Azula, lips touching. Ty Lee is pretty sure their tongues are touching as they open their mouths._

_Flushed cheeks. A type of group hug that is incredibly unusual. Ty Lee touches Azula's hand and Mai thinks for a moment that she is going to lose them both. Of course she has Zuko, but..._

_They are sitting on the grass, illuminated by pale moonlight, expensive clothes ruined and grass stained. Azula lies on her back and Ty Lee tries to hold both of their hands, but it evolves into more than she can handle._

_And at once Azula knows that it's going to be alright._

Years later, Azula cannot believe how wrong she was. She is usually always right. Peeling away from the window, she walks in to bed, where her friends are lying asleep. She crawls in between them, elbows and knees waking both girls. Azula never was considerate.

"Are you still mad?" Ty Lee asks and Azula sighs.

"Are you?" Azula replies and Ty Lee is tongue tied. Neither girls' anger has ended.

They lie there in the darkness for all too long. Azula is very aware of all of their breathing, and she tries to make hers in time with one, then the other, but is incapable. It isn't as if she needs other people anyway.

But Ty Lee initiates something this time, which is startling to both Mai and Azula.

It isn't entirely clear how it happens. It never is. It never was.

One moment it is the three of them together, the next they have their hands and legs and lips together.

Azula kisses Ty Lee first, something ferocious that is responded to with even more first. And Azula realizes that she is entirely gone from what she was before. Her heat and passion and anger translate to fingers digging into two other girls.

Mai undresses Azula; Ty Lee has her lips on Mai's neck. The room is too bright; the moon is too bold tonight over the ocean. Mai can see every detail of Azula's body. She was always too perfect, and Mai would dig her nails deep into the perfect pale skin and watch it become streaked with raw red lines.

She does it again. Azula is still beautiful. Beyond beautiful. Mai undoes her own clothes as Azula is stolen from her, now covered in claw marks that made her moan to receive.

They are gasping and grinding and forgetting. But Ty Lee still seems livid with her hand on the back of Azula's neck. Mai does not take everything off. Her underwear remains as she watches them for a moment.

Azula breaks free. Mai's fingers trail along her body and she wonders how Azula became an object instead of an unstoppable force. Her skin is smooth and Mai's fingers light against them, leaving Azula swallowing and occasionally making small, indistinguishable sounds. Her hands reach Azula's breasts as Ty Lee is on Mai's back, complicating everything.

Azula moans and Mai realizes she is too cold to feel more than the raw animalistic pleasure. Her flawless red nipples harden under Mai's lukewarm touch.

Mai looks at Azula as if to kiss her, but she only bites on her own lip, as Ty Lee kisses Azula's navel. Azula eyes are hollow despite her moaning.

And Mai touches her neck. She kisses her this time.

Azula closes her eyes, in ecstasy.

But, despite it all, she is still empty.

* * *

><p>It's melodramatic.<p>

It's a decent way to go out.

It has _flair_. Princess Azula has _flair_.

She toes the edge of the cliff and pebbles crumble down, splashing and cracking on rocks and water below. It is cold. She hopes the fall or the rocks kill her before she feels suffocation. But maybe she was meant to go out choking as she lived.

A glance behind her shoulder. Then a hollow laugh. Nobody is coming for her.

Nobody.

She runs forward, leaping. And for a second her first instinct is to catch herself on a blaze of blue but she restrains the urge. Her stomach plummets, her body feels strangely... loose. She did not expect to feel every sensation this way.

Her last thought is, _maybe I shouldn't do this_, before she hits the rocks and feels nothing more.

A smirk is on her lips as her body is cracked and cold.


	5. purple hyacinth

**Chapter Five**

**Purple Hyacinth - (**_**please forgive me**_**)**

* * *

><p>"Hi," Ty Lee says to a girl who cannot hear her.<p>

They are in a hospital in the closest city, which is a glossed over place that looks like it was torn out of quaint countryside Fire Nation propaganda. Azula is ridiculously tough. It takes a lot to kill her. It takes more to even knock her down. But Ty Lee cannot help but blame herself for not saving her.

"I know you can't hear me right now," Ty Lee continues, wrapping her arms around herself. The room is hot as a volcano, "uh, you really hurt yourself. I got pretty worried. I mean, I guess it was my fault but I was worried. I've always been worried that, uh, I would lose you."

Silence. The bruised and bandaged princess does not move.

"I just wanted to say that despite everything I've said and done since the day I... I picked Mai... it's good seeing you again, Azula. I missed you." Silence. Still no motion but the rise and fall of her chest. Of her broken ribs. "So, uh, get better fast. I need you. I've always needed you... even in my island paradise as you kept calling it ─ keep calling it ─ sorry that was morbid."

Silence. Rise and fall of her chest. At least she is breathing.

Ty Lee hesitantly walks out of the room and leans against the sliding door. She can smell ointments and antiseptics and everything else the Fire Nation has excelled at. They may not be Water Tribe healers but industry has provided better medical care than the Earth Kingdom.

"You don't look so hot," Mai says, walking with one of the doctors towards Azula's room. "Did you talk to her or something?"

"She didn't respond," Ty Lee replies, attempting a smile and somehow managing. "It's our fault, isn't it?"

"You can't blame yourself for that. It isn't like we could've known." Silence.

"We all fought so hard," Ty Lee whispers and Mai realizes that she is truly unnerved. "She was so cold and unfeeling and I never imagined she cared so much what we thought."

"I thought it was going pretty well," Mai says with a shrug. But Ty Lee can see behind her amber eyes that she is hurt too. "You can't tell this kind of thing with people. Even when you've known them your whole life."

_Ty Lee watches Mai join the duo of she and Azula. They are prepared to go after Zuko or the Avatar or something. Ty Lee is not sure which. And the first night Ty Lee is not sure if she should ask about what they did when they were blossoming into sexual beings. Maybe they should not have been._

_Maybe it should be over. Ty Lee does not know as Azula and Mai talk over reports of the Avatar and his sightings. She is braiding her hair very slowly as she listens to them and feels that growl of jealousy in her chest that she has always felt when Mai and Azula were closer._

_Ty Lee thought she won. That night they all slept together and she felt something emotional for Azula that she knew would never be returned. But their hands on each other, the way they hurt each other and Azula spit in Ty Lee's mouth and..._

_She just wants the princess to be hers and hers alone._

"I should've said yes. I wish I had said yes and it's why I'm so angry. Because my life was so perfect but I just kept thinking about the past. Or what could've been or should've been or whatever. For years I was so happy on Kyoshi Island. And then she just _smashed _into me again and..." Ty Lee makes a pained expression and stops talking. Mai swallows; she was never good at this kind of thing.

"That's my life. I wish I could but just couldn't." Pause. "Look, the doctors say she's going to be alright. Have you ever seen her defeated? I mean, for real. Not like after the comet. She got back up; we've seen that for weeks now."

"She got back up? She just nearly _died_. She just nearly killed herself, Mai. I wouldn't call that _getting back up_," Ty Lee snarls and Mai recoils visibly.

"She's going to be okay. Look, she's nearly impossible to kill. So many people have tried."

"Well, she would be able to do it herself, wouldn't she? A prodigy."

"You know your extremely obnoxious optimism about everything? Try to use that. You're seriously depressing me." Pause. Ty Lee sighs; she supposes Mai is right. "I think we should be worrying more about what will happen when Zuko finds out Azula is alive and we've been hiding her for three weeks."

"_Alive_. Sorry. Okay, alive!" Ty Lee cheers the last part with her lips twitching from a painful smile. Mai swallows; maybe she made a mistake.

"She's going to be fine, and she's going to use this as an excuse to make us do things for her. Just like old times," Mai says, feeling weird when Ty Lee is the pessimist and she is the optimist.

"I hope you're right," Ty Lee whispers.

Ty Lee thought almost losing Azula would quell her burning anger. But instead it makes it worse. She has seen Azula crazy; Mai has too. But the idea that she would kill herself and leave them both behind... so _what _if some bad things happened. So _what _if Azula is no longer in the confines of an asylum for the safety of everyone around her.

She couldn't leave them. Ty Lee or Mai. She _couldn't_. It is _not allowed_.

_"By the regal command of Crown Princess Azula, you are not allowed to kill yourself. I am putting my foot down." Azula says, tossing razors into a full sink. The water is red and then pink. Pink like Ty Lee's crumpled clothes._

_"You can't just tell me what to do," Ty Lee says sharply, her voice tinted with tears, and Azula frowns._

_"Yes. I can," is Azula's only response. She sits there as Ty Lee gets dressed and tends to minor wounds. They would have been far less minor if Azula had not intervened._

_They do not say anything. Then again, there is no reason to speak._

"She threatened to do it a lot," Mai says, Ty Lee jumping awake from her reverie. "Mostly just to get what she wanted from her father, though. _Good luck living forever_, she would say. Hmph."

"Did you visit her?" Ty Lee asks softly, but her words are charged with fire. Like something slowly burning, crackling, waiting for its chance to engulf the nearest object.

It takes Mai a moment to realize what she means.

"Sort of. I tried to but it wasn't pretty. I couldn't bring myself to see her like that again." Silence. "But I think she was better then than now."

"What?" Ty Lee asks, eyebrows shooting up. Her last contact with Azula before the marriage proposal left her in belated tears for days.

She spends more time watching her walking away than watching her come back. Running away, in that case.

"Yeah. I do."

"Crazy. In a straitjacket, is better than now?" Ty Lee demands, rage blossoming in her. "Why? Because you want her to be locked up?"

"If I wanted her to be locked up, I would have turned her in," Mai says and Ty Lee exhales sharply. She wants to be angry but Mai has a point. "I don't like her eyes. They're hollow. She doesn't have any fight left."

"When we were in bed together last night, she was completely hollow. When she was in the asylum or, well, whenever in our lives, she had so much fight in her. Incredible fight in her. Now she's just resigned," Mai replies, shaking her head slowly. "I love her."

"Not like I love her," Ty Lee says, her anger shifting from towards Azula to towards Mai.

"It's not a competition. She's going to live. Now we just have to worry about Zuko finding out," Mai says, sighing. She sits down on one of the uncomfortable chairs put in the waiting room.

"Maybe he should," Ty Lee says and Mai snorts derisively. "What? Are we going to go on the run with her? Or are we going to live in that house for the rest of our lives? At some point we have to make a move."

"I'm still figuring it out," Mai says, picking at her lips. She does not want to go into this with Ty Lee. The decisions they are about to make have too much weight for her liking. "Look, just try to think about the positive memories while we wait this out."

"I'll just be here reminiscing," Ty Lee groans, sitting down with her elbows on the window. This town is gross.

_Mai is glad that Zuko is blissfully unaware of her relationship with Azula and Ty Lee. She wants it to work with him, even if she keeps getting drawn back to them. Even if slumber parties might as well be orgies and she loves the way their hair feels and their lips and..._

_"Why don't you have a boyfriend, Azula?" Zuko asks abruptly and Ty Lee laughs nervously. It isn't something Mai ever expected Zuko to ask._

_"I want the Fire Nation, not a boyfriend. You think I could be such a great military strategist if I was worried about going on dates with the generals?" Azula examines her nails as if the question bores her. Ty Lee breathes a sigh of relief that Zuko does not notice._

_Mai makes mental note to thank Azula for her lying capabilities._

_"But if you got asked out, would you?" Zuko continues and Mai is still trying to fathom his questions._

_"Azula isn't the kind of person who gets asked out. She's the kind of person people masturbate thinking about but are too afraid to talk to her," Mai says and Azula snickers. Ty Lee is as pink as her clothes._

_"Eew, Mai," Zuko says, shuddering with his tongue out._

_"_Everybody _does," Azula says haughtily and Mai smirks. "Well, maybe not _you_, Zuko. But everyone else."_

_"Mai doesn't," Zuko says sharply and Mai chokes._

_"I didn't know you were so informed about her masturbation habits, ZuZu," Azula says, looking incredibly smug. "Why don't you ask her to share instead of sharing for her?"_

_"I hate you, Azula," Mai sighs. "I've only masturbated thinking about her by accident."_

_Ty Lee's ribs nearly crack from the force of her outburst of laughter. Zuko simply looks confused. Azula smirks, looking smug._

_"How do you do that by accident?" Ty Lee asks between giggles._

_"Like you're thinking about one thing but another comes into your mind and you just..." Mai shakes her head and sighs. "I shouldn't have said that."_

_"That's never happened to me," Azula says, cocking an eyebrow._

_"That's never happened to you because you can't masturbate without bleeding to death," Mai snaps and Azula's lips part in surprise._

_Zuko takes this as the perfect moment to leave._

Ty Lee gets up and finds tea. It is being served enthusiastically by a woman who clearly pities their situation. Mai is gazing out of the window, clearly in shock of what happened. Given, finding your best friend since childhood's mangled body tends to be traumatizing.

Slowly, she walks back to Mai and hesitantly pecks her on the cheek. It just makes Mai's stomach twist.

"Why would she do this?" Mai asks and Ty Lee shrugs, eyebrows knit. "She has an ego more massive than the fucking Earth Kingdom; how could she do this to herself?"

"It's setting in for you, isn't it?" Ty Lee frowns, then smiles, then rubs her neck. It is incredibly uncomfortable.

"I never got to answer her question," Mai sighs, sounding strangely sentimental. Ty Lee tilts her head to the side, asking Mai to continue nonverbally. "She is better than Zuko in bed."

Ty Lee laughs. It is a pointless, wounded laugh as if a meteor is hurtling at Earth and all you can do is laugh. Mai promptly laughs afterwards. And they just sit there cackling like hyena-crows for far too long. It only causes more pain.

_"I like sex with men," Mai says firmly, although it is hard to make that case when she is in her underwear with two girls she was just sleeping with. Azula rolls her eyes and sighs. Ty Lee purses her lips in discomfort. "No, I definitely do. I think this is just experimentation and I like sex with men."_

_"You completely don't. Zuko doesn't count as a man," Azula says, pouncing on the bed. Mai does not move but Ty Lee flinches. "Have you fucked an man other than him?"_

_"No. But I think that the experience is pleasant an─"_

_"Mai just said pleasant!" Ty Lee interrupts loudly, pointing with both hands. Her attempt to stop this from turning into a fight was futile. Azula smirks as Mai lies down on her back. Futile, completely futile._

_"I like sex with men." Mai repeats it as if it has any meaning._

_"So you just like being penetrated?" Azula asks and Ty Lee cringes. _

_Mai closes her eyes and does not bother to answer. But her eyes quickly flash open when there are lips very close to her ear._

_"I could find something to penetrate you with."_

_"You do not understand the difference between flirty and terrifying, do you?" Mai sighs, rolling over and curling into a ball. "That is the sketchiest thing anyone has ever said to me."_

_Azula crawls towards her, completely undeterred. Ty Lee starts undoing and redoing her braid in the mirror, trying to look inconspicuous._

_"I guarantee that I would do a better job penetrating you with household objects than Zuko would with his penis."_

_"No. Bad." Mai picks up a pillow and throws Azula backwards with the force of it. "See, that's terrifying. Not flirty. Very terrifying."_

_The pillow disintegrates into ash as the room glows sapphire. Azula sits up, cocking an eyebrow._

_"Am I better than him? Even if I'm not penetrating you with things," Azula asks and Mai rolls her eyes. At least she isn't trying to catch Mai off guard to get the answer._

_"I refuse to answer that," Mai says and Ty Lee scratches her face with her fingernails with a small shriek. "And please never talk about your brother's cock again because it is creepy and incestuous and... this is an uphill battle, isn't it? I am never going to win."_

_"It's doubtful," Azula says, plucking pillow ash out of her bra. "I'm difficult to beat."_

_"Ugh." Mai curls up even tighter, her knees touching her chin. "Your ego is repulsive."_

_"If you have such a problem with me why do you keep having sex with me?"_

Mai swallows and studies the town outside of the hospital. It is so sleepy and calm, unlike the turmoil inside of her. She does not know what she is supposed to feel about this.

The town is definitely impoverished. Zuko is so focused on rebuilding the nations the Fire Nation destroyed that he often ignores his own country. They suffered from war and industry as well. Factories rising up and driving people from their homes, farms yielding less and less crops as the soil is overworked for the forcibly booming population.

More soldiers. More soldiers.

Mai supposes she was a soldier in the war. Just with a fun specialization to make it seem more... exciting. Easier to stomach that she was barely fourteen and going out into the world slicing people's throats open.

Sometimes she has nightmares too. Azula is not alone. Ty Lee probably does.

Mai's stem from guilt. Or maybe fear. Or whatever it was she suppressed during the war and tried to conceal with sarcasm.

Her life was intended to be perfect. She would go to war and come home and marry someone, possibly Zuko, possibly some admiral or general and then she would be content. Not content. But not confused or endangered either.

She thinks she may have loved Azula.

They were kind of perfect for each other.

But at the same time, likely to burn each other to ashes.

_"The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain," Azula says softly, almost to herself. She runs her nail along Mai's spine. _

_She is very aware that Mai is awake and pretending to be asleep. That Mai just lied there silently with her eyes closed while her to best friends fucked relentlessly. And Azula will have none of that for some reason. Ty Lee has curled into herself, tired, glowing and not wanting to get involved with the Mai and Azula competition._

_"Who told you that?" Mai asks, still face down into a pillow._

_"My father," Azula says with a shrug, nails moving to Mai's neck. "I think he was talking about me."_

_Mai tries not to shiver. She knows things about Azula and Ozai that Azula doesn't know she knows. It is better not to tell Azula, because what is Mai going to do anyway? The princess thinks she is hiding it well... Mai will not devastate that. Ty Lee is not smart enough. She's too trusting to think of the acts of betrayal Azula has faced behind the dusty walls of the palace._

_Behind closed doors like they are right now._

_"Pleasure and pain are an interesting combination," Mai remarks, her eyes opening for a moment and stinging against the fabric of the pillow. "You seem to be an expert."_

_"I wouldn't say _expert_. I'm just... educated in sex?" Azula offers and Mai smirks. But Azula does not see as she runs her fingernails along Mai's spine._

_"You're never really going to be perfect, though. Nobody can be."_

_"I can come close. The closest. I'm the best firebender in... ever. I can accomplish the impossible," Azula says sharply, bristling. Mai did not mean to upset her; it is going to make sleeping much more difficult._

_"Relax. I was just jerking you around." Mai kisses her slowly. Azula's lips are chapped and they chafe against Mai's smoother lips._

_It seems to abet what Mai sparked._

Mai bangs her head against the window. Ty Lee cringes as Mai presses her forehead to the glass and stares out. The waiting is killing her. Azula is not likely to wake up any time soon, but they are just sitting around here expecting her to jolt back to life.

"I wish this weren't real," Mai says and Ty Lee is surprised by her honesty. Mai is never exactly straightforward.

"So do I," Ty Lee responds softly, hesitantly touching Mai's back.

But she pulls her hand away slowly.

She is not meant to be with Mai, because she now knows she must choose one of them.

And one of them needs her more.

_"I lie because I had an abusive childhood," Azula says, staring at the ceiling. Mai snorts derisively as Ty Lee makes a sympathetic sound. "Eventually lies become easier than the truth when you have to lie so your father doesn't beat you."_

_Ty Lee's lips are on Azula's neck as Mai is rolling her eyes._

_"You lie because you're always the smartest person in the room. And you need to validate that by bullshitting people. Lying is like morally questionable genius masturbation," Mai says flatly and Azula frowns._

_She hates when Mai is right._

Days pass. Days pass where Mai and Ty Lee sleep on rickety chairs and are waiting for something that may never come. The doctors seem to greatly pity them and have brought them food and tea on more than one occasion. They know nothing about the fact that they're serving the conquerors of Ba Sing Se.

It _is _kind of nice to be unnoticed. Ty Lee loved the attention for being instrumental in the long awaited victory. She went to the parties with pleasure with her arm wrapped around Azula's waist and she had fun. She loved sitting on stages and being made-up by expensive stylists that even her wealthy parents could not afford.

Mai hated all of it. She enjoys this life in a bubble with the vanishing princess and the peasant Ty Lee. But it all had to shatter because she couldn't keep them crossed. She takes all of the blame for what Azula did to herself. Maybe that's ridiculous. Maybe it makes perfect sense.

She bursts one night.

"We have to contact Zuko. We just have to. It's not like we could hide forever," Mai says loudly in the middle of the night. Ty Lee jolts awake and hits her head on the wall. Rubbing the sore spot, she studies Mai closely.

"Why does he have to know?" Ty Lee whispers, as if someone is listening. The hospital is deserted except for two nurses.

"Because Azula might actually die and Zuko should... I think he... I know we don't ever do the right thing ever, but it's the right thing to do," Mai says with a small sigh. Ty Lee chews on the inside of her cheek. She hates to admit that she agrees. "Look, last time I talked to him he was really worried about her."

"Well, that was─"

"No, last time I talked to him was a year ago."

"What? You didn't tell _me_."

"We tried to get back together, actually."

Ty Lee gasps loudly and one of the nurses dozing off in the hall stirs.

"Why didn't you tell us?" A shriek of disbelief.

"Because Azula's jealous and you can't keep a secret for the life of you," Mai explains dryly. Her fingers twitch slightly, but other than that she manages to hide her shame for not coming clean earlier. "We tried to get back together and it didn't work out."

Ty Lee has to admit she is right. Secrets are not exactly her strong suit. But Mai and Zuko _dating _again is something she absolutely had a right to know. Then again, she distinctly disposed of all of Mai's letters before finishing them, most of the time. It was easier not thinking about her most days.

"So, you tried to get back together?" Ty Lee leans in towards Mai. Her eyes glitter in the moonlight that trickles through the smudged window.

"Yes. And it didn't work out. Exactly what I just told you. A couple of dates, a realization that maybe thirteen year old love is not the same as in-your-twenties love and I decided to move again. And again. And again. And then I found Azula living in my house. Are you happy? There's my life story," Mai explains with a pointed sigh.

"We'll write to Zuko." Ty Lee frowns for a moment before closing her eyes again.

Zuko arrives while Azula has been slipping in and out of consciousness. They have her heavily drugged with some mixture of herbs, which is probably for the best because she seems to be in excruciating pain. Ty Lee cannot watch other people suffer. She has _made _many people suffer, but it kills her to see Azula sobbing when she is awake.

She certainly picked a painful way to try to kill herself. Mangled her body entirely.

So she sleeps. Endlessly.

When Ty Lee first slept with Azula, she could have imagined the princess's body was made of metal, or polished glass or ivory. Made of gold. They were alone together for the first time that time. There were no games or confusion or pretending or lying. They were together as _almost _adults and _almost _lovers.

But as Ty Lee looks at the unconscious princess in the pretty white bed, she realizes Azula is not made of some divine material. She is made of skin and bones and blood, just like everybody else.

Princess Azula is not made of gold.

She is human.

"Is anyone going to explain this to me?" Zuko demands as he passes bowing and stammering doctors. "The letter wasn't very clear. _Azula is dying. Come to this address_. Are you kidding?"

"What did you want? Should I have added an expressive poem or a couple questions about your day?" Mai replies harshly and Ty Lee blinks twice. There was not that _hostility _between them during their first two break-ups. Obviously this mysterious third one did something to them.

"Just, just tell me everything that happened," Zuko says with a small sigh.

He is in for an intriguing tale.


	6. nettle

**Chapter Six**

**Nettle - (**_**cruelty**_**)**

* * *

><p>After three weeks, Azula fully wakes up. It is in a sudden burst, like an explosion. She gasps, blinks, glances around. She is not <em>dead<em>, nor is she dreaming. She is in a hospital. A fairly nice hospital, but not of the Caldera caliber.

She feels disoriented and her bones are sore. She sees yellow stains on her skin that once were purple. Bandages everywhere. Wrapped tightly around her body, constricting her.

Memories of brief consciousness come to her after a few moments. Agonizing pain beyond anything she had faced in her life. And she has faced more pain than most other do. But her bones seem to be in place. Her skin is ice cold and covered in goosebumps. Did it become autumn so quickly?

She forces herself out of the bed and finds her legs without the preternatural strength of a firebender. Stumbling, clutching the ugly yellow walls as she drags herself to the window, she looks outside. In the sky, the constellations have shifted. Maybe it happened while she was in that house with Mai and Ty Lee and she was just too busy fucking them than to notice.

But it is autumn. And Azula is not dead in the bottom of the ocean as she intended.

She is in a hospital.

And... there are a multitude of flowers around her hospital bed. That's new.

She walks to the door, expecting it to be locked, but she simply walks out into the hall at the first twist of the handle. In the dimly lit hallway, she sees Mai alone. She is lying on a wooden bench engraved with helenium flowers. They stand out as painted red and orange against the scraped wood. Azula only recognizes the flowers themselves because they were featured heavily in the courtyard. The perfect natural display of Fire Nation colors and having a propensity for growing in abundance.

Azula walks to her, feeling like a zombie and moving with less agility than one and Mai jumps up with a knife in hand. Azula stumbles backwards in surprise and someone catches her. Someone male.

"You got up quickly." Zuko. No, no, no, no...

Azula responds with both of her hands on fire. Zuko blocks the blow as she pushes off of him and winds up with her back against the wall. Her heart is racing yet lagging from the remnants of the drugs in her system. She breaks out in a sweat but still feels ice cold.

"Why is he here? Mai, why is my brother here?" Azula demands loudly and Ty Lee runs into the hallway. No doctors, just a trio of traitors.

"He's been here for a couple of days now. Azula, we thought you were going to die. We had to tell him." Mai sets down her knife on the bench and starts walking towards Azula hesitantly as she speaks.

"It was Mai's idea I told her not to," Ty Lee exclaims and Mai sighs.

"Azula, I'm not going to do anything you don't want me to," Zuko says slowly.

They all have their hands up even though Azula is the criminal.

"I'm glad you're alive," Zuko continues and Mai wishes that he wouldn't. This would all be easier if he would just leave the room, in her opinion. "I don't really know what I'm supposed to say but I have absolutely no intention of imprisoning you or... anything like that. I'm just really glad you're alive. You were pretty far from it when I got here."

"Why would you _not _imprison me? I find it fairly hard to believe that you had a sudden change of heart when you saw my mangled body." Azula's voice is sharp and clear. Zuko is taken aback as she suddenly shifts. When she takes the power in the room its visible. It always has been with her. "I don't believe a word of anything you say to me."

"Obviously, you're doing pretty well for yourself," Zuko attempts.

"Mhm. Yes, you definitely derived that assumption from my suicide attempt. Someday, perhaps I'll teach you how to lie." Azula lifts her hands from the walls and crosses her arms over her chest.

"Azula, the point is that no one is going to make you do anything you don't want to do," Zuko attempts again and Mai cringes. Azula's eyes are glued to Ty Lee for a moment, but the Kyoshi Warrior does not move. She has no intention of chi-blocking Azula at a time like this.

"I don't trust you for a second," Azula says earnestly, studying Zuko closely. He reveals his moves before he strikes; he always has. But he is in defensive posture and only defensive. Still, Azula does not loosen or ease.

"I just want you to come home," Zuko says and Azula glances between the trio. They form a triangle around her, but there is a gap between Ty Lee and the window. Clearly, that is the riskiest place to run; Azula would have an easier time getting past Zuko or Mai.

"Maybe I will," Azula says softly, loosening her muscles. "I can't run forever, I suppose."

The second the room breathes a collective sigh of relief, Azula runs. She slips past Ty Lee, her legs screaming in pain, in fact, her entire body in agony. She pushes off of the open window with one foot as Zuko, Ty Lee and Mai belatedly scramble after her.

"Why did we believe her?" Mai sighs, hoisting one leg over the window. "Why did we believe her for a second? We are so dumb."

Ty Lee pushes Mai's back and climbs out of the window at twice the speed. She starts running in the direction Azula went, although only deserted street is in front of her. Zuko helps Mai to her feet and she begrudgingly murmurs a thank you.

"She can't get far. She's really wounded," Mai sighs, starting to run. Her legs already ache; she has been lying around a hospital for two weeks and is not exactly in her best shape for a chase.

Zuko cannot believe what he has learned, as it races through his head as he runs towards the forest outside of town. Azula just made it significantly harder to catch her, if that was where she ran. And, by all means, there is nowhere else to hide but in the thick foliage of the forest.

"We're not going to catch her, are we," Mai says as she trips over a branch and barely stops herself from falling on her face.

"Ty Lee seems to be pretty far ahead?" Zuko offers feebly. Of course this would happen. Of course he would finally find Azula and then she would run off instantly.

"She can't run forever," Mai says with a shrug. She starts running again before Zuko can add, _neither can we_.

Zuko mills through the thoughts as he checks around different trees and splits up with Mai to cover more ground. They told him everything, ever detail. The idea that Mai had been in a relationship with Azula at the same time as him is almost repulsive. He did not want to believe it when he heard it. But it was true. And then Mai was harboring Azula illegally, _and _Ty Lee _and _Zuko never would have expected this in a time after the Boiling Rock.

That was supposed to solidify it. It was an act of self sacrifice that meant Mai and Zuko would be together forever, with slightly more significance than carving names into a tree or getting engaged. But it ended. _And _it ended twice. Azula trusted them enough to stay with them for nearly three weeks, and Mai is... Zuko thinks she is in love with Azula. It revolts and terrifies him, but even if she will not admit any emotions being connected to the apparent significant amount of sex they have been engaging in, Zuko knows Mai is in love with Azula.

And maybe he needs to let her go.

As Zuko is debating what to do about his predicament, he hears rattling breaths. Slowly, he quiets his running and glances around. Azula. He steps softly, lightly, like he has been training to do of late in his firebending. He can hear her breathing and he sincerely hopes it is not a trap.

Zuko bolts forward around a moss strewn bolder and finds her leaning against it, panting and on the verge of tears. He hesitates, standing in front of her. Part of him wants to light his hands, the less primal part wants to make a show of good faith.

Azula simply coughs.

"You didn't think that one through, did you?" Zuko asks, cocking an eyebrow.

She coughs again.

Zuko kneels in front of her, carefully, as if approaching a vicious animal. He might as well be. He has distinct memories of cornering her and Uncle being burned and a street exploding. She just looks at him, still choking on her breath.

He touches her bare foot, cautiously. Her feet are bleeding profusely and sticks and gravel are stuck in the pale skin. Zuko shudders. Her legs are still lined with bruises from her fall, now turning yellow and green against the shade of the moon.

"You can get better medical treatment in the Capitol," Zuko says and Azula rolls her eyes. But he is right. "Although I am pretty impressed with how far you got despite the bruises and fractures and, uh, atrophy."

"I'm full of surprises," Azula snarls, coughing again. This time blood dribbles onto her chin and Zuko inhales sharply.

The small corner of forest is suddenly occupied by two more bodies. Mai and Ty Lee stand, staring at Zuko and Azula and wondering if they should be poised to strike. But Azula slowly stands up, pushing on the boulder to lift herself.

"Take me wherever you want. I don't care anymore," Azula says bitterly, glaring pointedly at Mai and Ty Lee. Mai shifts her weight uncomfortably but Ty Lee simply stares back. She is not afraid of Azula anymore, and this only makes her rage burn more. That Azula would just abandon them after all she put them through with her suicide attempt.

Zuko holds Azula up with one arm as they make their way back to the town.

* * *

><p>"So you would just leave?" Ty Lee demands loudly as Azula is slipping her bandaged feet into shoes. She is now dressed in her own clothes, her make-up done and her hair fixed. But everyone sees through the facade of physical togetherness. She is still as unstable as an active volcano.<p>

"My brother will lock me up forever. I don't want that life."

"After _everything _you put us through! We thought you were going to die, Azula! I can't believe you would just abandon us! _Twice_!"

"Well, in my defense, if I was dead, I wouldn't have to worry that much about abandoning you two," Azula says airily with a shrug. Ty Lee clenches one fist and before smashing it into Azula's face, punches the wall.

"You can't just leave people who need you!" Ty Lee screams and Azula blinks in surprise. She did not consider Mai or Ty Lee as _needing her_. No one needs Azula but Azula.

"I didn't know that was so important to you," Azula purrs, but her tone shakes slightly. It takes Ty Lee's rage to open something inside of her that realizes that people might care what happens to her.

But then she reminds herself of how happy they were without her. Ty Lee's idyllic life, Mai moving on so easily. The Boiling Rock. The sofa in their little house by the sea. They only wanted Azula once she was gone.

"It's useless. As soon as we get back to the Capitol, and I make sure you don't try anything, I'm going back to Kyoshi Island."

"If that's what makes you happy." Azula stands up and leaves the room. She is done arguing.

Completely done.

* * *

><p>No one speaks during the ride towards the Capitol. Azula stares vacantly through the window at the ramshackle towns the pass. Zuko is trying his best not to think about the fact that the three of them have had sex with each other. Ty Lee is silent until she occasionally breaks to pop each one of her knuckles individually, making Mai cringe each time.<p>

They arrive at an inn halfway there. Too much to travel in one day. Zuko hesitantly watches Azula as Mai wraps her arm around her waist. It's pointed. Directed at the Fire Lord. Azula is secretly glad of it. The touch keeps her grounded, for some reason. At least she feels like she has one person on her side, and she never expected it to be Mai.

Ty Lee demands her own room. Mai sleeps in with Azula and Zuko forces himself to trust them. He deals with the messy work of making sure they are not assassinated as Azula lies down and Mai sits over her.

Zuko still finds himself outside of Mai and Azula's room. He plans to flee if he hears anything beyond friendship, but after he saw Azula catapult herself out of a window moments after waking from an induced coma of two weeks, he is uneasy about her.

Once she is in the palace, perhaps he will have more control. But for now, he sits in the hallway of a deserted inn as Ty Lee sleeps in one room and Mai and Azula sleep in the other.

Azula wakes up screaming and Mai jolts up in confusion, wielding a knife.

"What? What's happening?" Mai demands loudly and Zuko wakes with a jolt. His neck aches from falling asleep against the walls of the hallway.

"Nothing," Azula murmurs, pushing herself out of the bed. Her heart is racing. She has the sharp realization that she has been captured by Zuko and her freedom is long gone. Her freedom has slipped through her fingers, and her body is still sore from trying to end her own life.

She feels herself choking. The suffocation sets in as she feels her heart spiraling out of control. Fierce nausea overcomes her as she sits down beneath the window, moonlight shining on her raven hair. Mai sits up slowly and wonders if she should approach her.

"He born as the heir/he who stands gilded in gold/holding the fates and future/of a people in discontent. Of those who were born from the earth/who among the rocks and dust grow old/sweating and toiling/they plot the heir's final descent. And those born from the waves/who live amongst the sea foam..." She recites to herself. There's a tune to it, a song. Mai has never heard it before, but Zuko has.

He is halfway in the room, concerned for Azula and Mai. Azula looks up, seeming significantly calmer.

"You can't just burst in here!" Her voice is lacking breath, lacking support, but her anger is clearly there.

"You were screaming," Zuko says, examining her. She has her knees touching her chest beneath the starlight. Mai is sitting on the edge of the bed, not sure what she should be doing. "That's our mother's lullaby."

"Mhm," is all Azula dignifies him with. She stands up and forces open the window. The cool night air touches her face and the suffocation starts to subside. She hides how proud of herself she is that she managed to seize control of herself before it spiraled out of control.

"I forgot the words," Zuko says, standing beside her and looking out of the window. He pauses for a moment, hoping she does not push him out of it, but she does not move.

"I remembered them. It's not like we heard it for years. It _is _treasonous when I think about it," Azula murmurs, thinking of their father banning any of the lyrics from their lips. But it had nothing to do with treasonous words of the royal lullaby, it had to do with him erasing any memories of his wife. He did not want to remember her. Azula did not blame him. "I find it more effective than other poems or songs. Which is disgustingly ironic, in my opinion, seeing as its mother's fault that I'm this fucked up."

Zuko does not want to touch that sentiment with a ten foot pole. Azula blaming mother is significantly easier than trying to psychoanalyze her in any other way.

"Maybe we should just leave now, if we're all awake," Zuko says, walking away from the window. Mai nods and stands up, starting to get ready.

Zuko wakes Ty Lee.

Azula continues to gaze out of the window.

* * *

><p>"Ty Lee says she's leaving as soon as we reach the Capitol," Azula says to Mai as they stand on the side of the road the next night. They are taking a break in the dark, cool night. The breeze brushes against their skin as they stand alone together. Ty Lee is talking to Zuko.<p>

"She probably is. It was getting hard to keep her in the beach house, much less in the palace," Mai says with a shrug. Azula feels ridiculous immediately for making it seem like she cared.

"You'll leave too, won't you? And I'll just wind up stuck with my stupid brother," Azula says sharply and Mai chuckles. Her stupid brother. Azula glares at her for laughing.

"I don't think I'm leaving," Mai says, crossing her arms from the cold. The city must trap heat or something, because it gets far colder out here in the countryside.

"Oh, have you fallen in love?" Azula says sweetly and Mai rolls her eyes.

"I'm definitely leaving if you say things like that," Mai replies with a sigh.

She leans forward and presses her lips against Azula's. And the princess leans in to it.

Mai is glad she is not dead. Azula is glad too.

Ty Lee watches them and feels a twist of envy in her gut. No matter how hard she tries to kill the feelings, they remain. She remembers everything no matter how hard she stabs the past and attempts to slay it.

She walks to them slowly as they seem to be kissing with their tongues now. Zuko does not seem to notice as he walks towards the stream off the side of the road.

"In public. Really?" interrupts the kiss going on for far too long in Ty Lee's opinion.

"Yes," is Azula's sharp reply. "I might as well use my freedom while I can. I'm probably going to be in prison by this time next week."

Defeated. She sounds defeated. Mai brushes her fingertips against Azula's hand.

Ty Lee tries to strangle the thought of wanting to stay with Azula, regardless of her anger.

She is fuming in the night. Azula is immune to the cold. And Mai shivers as she holds Azula's hand.

* * *

><p>"I'm not coming over there. I see those scissors," Azula says sharply, crossing her arms.<p>

They are in the next hotel on their way, sharing a room together. It feels _almost _like old times if Azula were not still in bandages and if they were not essentially prisoners. Zuko is overly compassionate and forgiving in that Azula is not even in handcuffs. Or maybe he just figures he cannot overpower them all at once without an army.

"Azula, we're taking our relationship to the next level. Mai did it," Ty Lee says, smiling.

Just days ago, Ty Lee was livid. But today is one of her warm days towards the relationship. Azula is fairly certain she still plans to return to Kyoshi Island, but for today, Ty Lee is part of their trio. Azula does not mind it. Mai is glad of it.

Azula despises the way that they are both incredibly kind, lovely and helpful to her after she tried to kill herself. She is glad she did not succeed, despite the pain her body is in. But they both were just livid and distrustful of her, and now they are falling over to make her happy.

Young Azula would have exploited this. Mature Azula feels sickened by it.

"I did do it, Azula. You kind of have to now," Mai sighs, holding up her hands.

Azula grits her teeth and slips her own hands under the blankets of the bed. Ty Lee and Mai are sitting on the end of it, Azula at the head, slumped against the wall. Despite the high quality of the hotel, it does not even have a headboard.

"I'm not going to give you an ultimatum," Ty Lee says slowly, taking the scissors from Mai. "Because I'm giving you three options and not two."

"Do you even know what ultimatum means? It has a few too many syllables for your vocabulary," Azula snarls, hiding her hands further. Ty Lee's eye twitches. She looks like she wants to scream at Azula like she had been, but she forces a smile.

Oh, how Azula loathes pity.

"Your choices are," Ty Lee says regally, snipping the scissors in the air, "you can sleep with exclusively men for the rest of your life."

"Ugh," is Azula's only response.

"So no to that. You can die with cobwebs in your panties," Ty Lee says and Mai snickers at her phrasing. Azula does not even dignify that with a response. "Or you can let us clip off your nails."

"How about I find someone who loves me for my personality and doesn't care if I have beautiful nails?" Azula purrs and Ty Lee and Mai burst out laughing. Azula frowns bitterly.

"You... you weren't joking?" Mai asks feebly as Ty Lee is still laughing. "Your personality is not a winner, princess."

"My nails display that I'm wealthy and─"

"Nobody is ever going to mistake you for a peasant," Ty Lee says forcefully. Pause. "Snip, snip."

"I choose option two."

"She chooses die with cobwebs in her panties. Do you really love your nails that much?" Mai asks, cocking an eyebrow. "You will never again have sex for the rest of your life just to have nails you can climb trees with?"

"They're not for climbing trees," Azula mutters, although she knows they don't care.

"They're for stabbing the eyes out of doctors and earthbenders," Mai corrects, shaking her head slowly. "Mostly the doctors."

"It wasn't a problem before," Azula says, not wanting to go into in depth discussions of her insanity. She cannot believe they are forcing her to do this.

"Alternatively, you can find someone really into being tortured," Ty Lee offers in a faux sweet tone. Azula lies down and closes her eyes.

"Ugh, I bet there is someone into that. Azula, can you imagine being fucked by a knife?"

"I don't want to imagine that and I'm going to sleep."

"We're going to do it while you're sleeping."

"I will scream so loud that─"

"Oh, they'll put it on our gravestones. _Tried to clip Princess Azula's nails_. So sad," Mai remarks, smirking.

"Snip, snip," Ty Lee repeats before the scissors get stuck. She scowls at them and tries to fix them.

"She can't even use scissors. This is ridiculous. Azula, I did it. You're going to."

"I will let you file them to be more round and less dagger-shaped. Even though the points are much more useful."

"I'll take that. Probably won't bleed to death that way."

They win. Azula rises from her hiding spot in the bed and holds out her nails with her eyes closed and teeth clenched. She has the resolve to handle this; she knows she does.

"This wasn't a problem when we were kids," Azula mumbles, but she goes unheard. She hears the first clip and winces, but refuses to open her eyes.

The second. She breathes in through her teeth. The third. She thinks she might cry. The fourth. Now she is crying. The fifth. Azula screams. The scissors hit the floor as Azula still does not open her eyes but shrieks as if someone is trying to gut her.

"Stop, stop, stop!" Ty Lee screams as Mai drops the scissors.

"No, you have to finish all of them! Now they're uneven, that's worse!" Azula screams and Mai is certain that they have just woken up the entire hotel.

Ty Lee scrambles for the scissors and picks them up again.

"Just close your eyes," Ty Lee says shrilly, her heart beating out of her chest.

Azula surprisingly does as Ty Lee says. After more winces as if they are slicing Azula's skin and not clipping her nails to a length still longer than most normal people have, she examines her hands.

"That looks professional," Azula attempts, trying to console herself. They _do _look nice.

"If we paint them red they'll look more throat ripping," Ty Lee offers, her brow knit together in concern. Mai slowly shakes her head, smirking.

"Why don't we stain them with the blood of your enemies? I'll call Zuko," Mai says, her concave stomach shaking slightly with laughter. Ty Lee grabs her arm angrily.

"You shut up, Mai. I'm sorry for maiming you, Azula," Ty Lee says fiercely, her cheeks flushed. Mai just shrugs.

"It's... it's alright," Azula sighs. "I still have my teeth." Pause. "And also, I mean, lightning and fire."

Ty Lee tries to contain her laughter. She can't.

"You... you are never going to need to rip someone's throat out with your teeth."

"Ty Lee, what if her hands and feet are tied behind her back?" Mai turns her palm up and raises her eyebrows. But she has a mocking smirk on her lips.

"She can _breathe fire_," Ty Lee says through her giggles.

"You never know. I might have to someday," Azula says with a small roll of her eyes. "You know, they have drugs that subdue bending. That could completely happen to me and I would absolutely need to rip someone's throat out with my teeth."

"You amuse me," Mai sighs, lying down on the bed. Azula continues staring at her nails. There is not even a significant difference.

"Would you like me to point them for you?" Ty Lee offers, clipping the scissors twice.

"That will be entirely unnecessary," Azula replies with a small shiver.

"Well, the option is open." Ty Lee lies down and Azula slowly does too.

"Good to know," Azula sighs. "I can't believe I let you do that to me."

"We could cut off some of Ty Lee's braid," Mai says, smirking again. Ty Lee touches her hair defensively. "Would that make you feel better?"

Azula blinks. She has a few days left of some form of freedom. She might be Zuko's prisoner, but he has no control right now. And she decides that she is going to make it count.

She turns on her side and presses her lips against Mai's. Mai is incredibly confused, but she goes with it. Tonight has been weird, particularly Ty Lee not screaming at anyone, and Azula's strange amicability.

The princess slips her hand up Mai's thin white undershirt. It makes her shiver slightly. Mai sits up, light fingers on her skin too vaguely tantalizing. She takes off her shirt and winds up straddling Azula out of some archaic reflex.

Ty Lee swallows. She wonders if she should leave or join them and it confuses her. She knows that she will have to leave them in two days as she sees Mai grinding against Azula as if this is not all some strange lie. They are lying to themselves if they think that this will work out at all.

She slips away from inhibition, touching her lips to Azula's neck from behind her. Ty Lee wants to touch her, wants desperately to touch her in ways that she should not if she values her future. She slides her hands to Azula's cleavage, knowing the entire way that this is not a good idea, as wonderful as it feels for both of them.

Azula flickers and flares in the night, realizing that this is the beginning of the end. She has two people on her, around her as if it is not all going to fade. Her skin is flushed but still oddly cold, despite fingertips on it.

She is fairly sure that Ty Lee has removed her nightgown, because she finds her skin exposed to the perfumed air of the small hotel room. The arousal is almost painful, because it cannot last forever.

Forever is a lie.

A wet, throbbing lie.


	7. bay leaf

**Chapter Seven**

**Bay Leaf - (**_**I change but in death**_**)**

* * *

><p>Azula never thought she would see the Capitol again. She did not intend to see it again. But here it is, through the window, passing by. The dust kicked up into her throat from the rough dirt roads of the country are replaced with smoothness and smog.<p>

It is the place where she was born. It is the place she did not leave until her father sent her out into the world to bring Zuko home. It is the place where she first fell in love, and where she suffered from her first heartbreak. It is the place she wanted to leave with all of her heart, but never could bring herself to do.

"Flowers for the dead!" a woman calls from the market square. "Flowers for the dead!"

Azula gazes at her intently as Mai remembers the voice that greeted her when she came across a town she had not seen since she was a child. But among the people selling things, the green gems made from volcanic ash, and the perfumes or the food, the only voice that rings clear is a florist.

"Flowers for the dead!" is the last thing they hear before they approach the palace.

_"She has the ability to inspire obsession," Mai says, leaning against the wall of the cell in the Boiling Rock. "In people who hate her and people who love her. It's disturbing. Your life has revolved around her for years. I wound up with Zuko because he was right by her. It has to end."_

_"It's not an obsession."_

_"Is it love then?" Mai asks with a small scoff. "It's obsession. Azula is an obsession that anyone can be eaten alive by."_

_Ty Lee silently thinks about Mai's words and wishes she did not have to. The time sitting in their cell mostly consists of silence, and Ty Lee hates silence. She does not think of home, or her family, or even Azula. She thinks of what she could have done differently to not be here._

_The silence kills her._

Azula steps out of the carriage and looks at the palace. It looks beautiful. But always the same. Unchanging, unlike the city around it, which constantly evolves.

She walks towards it hesitantly, Zuko watching her every move. Mai seizes her hand and walks with her. Maybe it is a signal to Zuko. Maybe it is love. Azula does not know or care anymore. Here she is, trapped again. She thought she could escape her fate, but she could not.

If she isn't in prison in a week's time, she will be surprised. Even if Zuko is not lying, his friends will not settle until Azula is neutralized. And so now she walks as if she is walking to her own funeral. Ty Lee lingers behind, walking closer to Zuko.

Azula walks to her bedroom. It has been a long time since she has been inside. She pushes open the door and finds that it has been freshly cleaned, as if it is waiting for her. But it has been years and years. The sheets are done how she always liked them.

Perhaps Zuko asked for it to be done. Azula does not care enough to inquire.

"It looks nice," Mai remarks, releasing Azula's hand. Azula slips away from her and examines everything in the room. "I don't think he's going to send you to prison."

"Of course you don't," Azula says coldly and Mai does not know what to make of it. She lies down on Azula's bed, her head flooded with memories of what she has done in this bed.

"Do you remember when our worst fight was when you told Ty Lee she wasn't allowed to make puns anymore?" Mai asks with a small, mirthless laugh.

Azula does remember. It was a blissfully ignorant time in her life. But things change.

_"It's always better to be the dumbest one in the room," Ty Lee says, examining Azula's ceiling._

_"That's never posed itself as an opportunity for me," Azula replies softly, not intending for it to be a cruel reply. She is being completely and utterly honest. "Why is it better?"_

_Azula brushes Ty Lee's hair from her face and the contact of skin against skin sends ripples and shivers and volts through two bodies. _

_"It just is," is Ty Lee's insightful response. She offers a soft shrug of her shoulders._

_"Mhm," is all Azula can summon._

"I'm screwed, aren't I?" Azula sighs, walking to the window. She would sit on the little window seat for hours when she was younger. Pensively gazing was one of her favorite hobbies.

"Not necessarily. Zuko's a wimp if you exploit him right," Mai replies, closing her eyes as if she is so comfortable. Or maybe she is, Azula laments. "Just use those pretty eloquent lies of yours to convince him you want to recover or whatever, and he'll do anything for you."

"I find that hard to believe," Azula replies, sitting on the window seat and staring out. It is an incredible view, truly majestic. But slightly different from when she was last here. Seasons change, cities change, people change. Nothing stays the same long enough for Azula to truly figure it out.

"You're acting like he's you. Zuko's not you. He was raised on second chances and believing in other people. It's kind of adorable. Actually, it was what attracted me to him most." Mai hopes she did not step on anything by mentioning her previous relationship with Zuko, but Azula shows no envy or pain.

"I wonder what it would have been like if I was raised by my uncle and Zuko by my father," Azula says, tapping on the glass of the window and disrupting the rest of a spider-fly.

"I don't even want to think about that reality," Mai says, her eyes still peacefully closed. Azula does not know what to make of it.

"So you like me just as I am?" Pause. Mai eventually nods. "So why is _good _Zuko more attractive to you than a Zuko who is more like _me_."

"I may be into you, Azula, but you're not the only kind of thing I'm into. No, it was refreshing to see that. He cared genuinely. Cared about things enough to make sacrifices for them. That wasn't exactly something I was used to," Mai explains, running her fingers along the silk blankets of the bed.

"You liked him because he was different," Azula offers and Mai hesitantly nods. "And what is it that attracts you to me?"

"I'm not going to fellate your ego, Azula." Pause. Azula turns to face the window with an intent gaze at a swaying tree. "Alright, I'm attracted to you because I _am_. I've tried to figure it out, by all means, but I can't for the life of me. You're toxic."

Azula runs her finger along the glass. It makes a strange sound as she does not respond. Mai is certain she has wounded her, but Azula has frozen over before Mai could even start to make her melt. And so Mai lies calmly and placidly on the bed as Azula sits with the stillness of a sculpture. The thousand yard stare. A gaze that has so much as it stares at so little for so long.

"This would be easier if you were just trying to piss off my brother," Azula finally sighs.

It hits Mai right then what is happening. When it was Azula and Ty Lee getting closer than it should have been, she simply scoffed and minded her own business. But now it is she and Azula getting closer than they should be. Mai takes a deep breath and hopes she is not getting into more than she can handle.

"My life would be so much easier if it weren't for you." Pause. Azula expects Mai to realize that her friend is still in bandages from nearly dying, but she continues with, "But it also would be extremely boring. I mean, I spend two years in the Earth Kingdom, you come along and I'm in a hostage negotiation. I spend half a decade trying to make things work with Zuko then reinvent myself then repeat, and you come along and I'm... here... doing this."

"I'm glad I don't bore you," Azula says regally and Mai rolls her eyes. "Did you really have sex with my brother?"

"Lots of times. I wouldn't make that up. Nobody would make that up, Azula." Mai smirks. Azula is taken aback by it altogether. Even in their tormenting of Zuko in their youth, she always thought too highly of him.

"What happened between you two anyway?" Azula asks, cocking an eyebrow.

"I don't even want to think about it." Silence. Mai swallows. "I still kind of think that my life would work out if we were together."

"That's definitely an unhealthy relationship."

"_Ugh_. Even _you _are saying that me and Zuko have an unhealthy relationship. My parents started saying that and I'm pretty sure they tried to engage me to Zuko before I even met him," Mai says and Azula is startled that it is all pouring out.

"You're still not answering my question..." Azula picks at her nails, trying not to reveal the extent of her interest in Mai and Zuko's deteriorated relationship.

Mai groans and turns over on the bed. She does not seem to want to say anything, but Azula knows it will come out eventually.

"It just got weird for us. Destructive. I'll tell you more when I have to."

"What a teaser," Azula remarks with an entertained smirk.

"You shut up. Zuko... is not good news for me," Mai sighs, toying with Azula's blankets. "He's well meaning. He's not like us... and maybe that's why he doesn't work for me."

"Danger, hm?" Azula asks with a slight seductive tease in her tone. "You don't like stability, do you? It bores you. Zuko isn't destructive... he's boring."

And she is creeping across the room and on her knees on the mattress beside Mai before Mai can protest.

"It's destructive when I keep trying to make it work even when I don't like him. All we ever had in common was..." Ma trails off. Azula does not need another ego boost.

"Me," Azula finishes despite Mai's evident lack of desire to acknowledge it.

Azula's lips graze Mai's clavicle and Mai is relieved that the conversation is over. Azula's lips slip up further, to her neck. Mai closes her eyes and breathes in slowly. Sometimes Azula burns with this infernal splendor, but other times, she is a cold glacial fire. And Azula has not been remotely warm in a long time. Right now, Mai's skin heats hers, and not the other way around.

"Your ego repulses me," Mai murmurs as she reaches for the hem of Azula's nightgown.

"I think you love it," Azula replies, lifting her lips from Mai's skin for a brief moment.

"I think you prove my point by thinking I love it," Mai responds, her cheeks now flushed. Azula slips up at the guide of Mai's hands, removing the rest of her nightgown.

"Don't argue with it. You love it," Azula says and Mai does not argue.

She simply gives in to absolute pleasure.

* * *

><p>Ty Lee has never expected her romances to last for long, or for her dreams to ever come true. It just is not how her life has ever worked before. She keeps a positive attitude, and most of the time, that is all she has going for her. A positive attitude.<p>

She is used to trouble, and used to the trouble she is facing as she tries to draft this letter. As she tries to decide if she will stay or go. No matter where she winds up, she supposes she will get by. She always does. But there is the choice between a balanced, healthy life on Kyoshi Island and an insane but wonderfully vivid life with Azula and Mai.

Ty Lee has never been one for boring and safe, but she does not know if she has it in her to give herself to Azula and Mai fully. Her anger for Azula still exists, simmering under the surface. And Mai is becoming more twisted and entwined with Azula every day.

The girl who Ty Lee fell in love with is gone. She was when Ty Lee looked into her eyes and denied their marriage. And Mai is not the same either; there is a reason that Ty Lee did not finish reading most of her letters.

Always, Ty Lee pretends she is immune to sadness, that she is strong and bubbly and coasts over sadness. But every time she gets hurt, that just makes it sting more, lingering under the surface. And when she is so vulnerable, _anyone _can hurt her.

And, Agni, they do.

They do.

"What are you doing?" Zuko. "I'm not prying, you just seem... distressed."

"It's late," Ty Lee remarks, glancing at the moon at its apex. Zuko shrugs.

"My sister and ex-girlfriend are having sex with each other," Zuko offers bluntly and Ty Lee laughs. A genuine laugh, not one she is forced to display. "It's kind of hard to sleep."

"They do that," Ty Lee offers feebly.

She gestures to the bed and Zuko sits down, not shutting the door behind him. He does not want anyone to think that he is _with _her right now, by no fault of hers. Maybe it is just the constant desire to take the higher road and that is exactly what turned Mai off of him. But it exists; Zuko wants desperately to make up for the sixteen years of his life spent as a slave to conquest and amorality.

"What are you writing? Or... not writing, I guess," Zuko asks and Ty Lee shrugs.

"I'm trying to decide if I'm staying or not." Pause. "It's to Suki."

Zuko rubs his lips together. He does not know what to say about it, except that he is sure Ty Lee is healthier with her friends on Kyoshi Island than her friends in the Fire Nation. The anger he has seen in her eyes with Azula and Mai is something Zuko never imagined he would witness.

But he can tell she is leaning towards staying. His social cues are not top of the line, but he can see the longing and the way that Ty Lee's fingers twitch with the pen, her brow knit. She wants to stay, even though Zuko is fairly certain that staying would unravel her.

"Can I talk to you?" Ty Lee asks softly, setting down the pen. Zuko nods. He also is not the best at heart to hearts, but he is probably better at it than cruel Azula and emotionless Mai.

"Yeah. We have time," Zuko says, nodding slowly. Ty Lee blinks a few times and finally sighs.

"My feelings are so mixed about them," Ty Lee explains, looking wounded. The _hurt _in her eyes stuns Zuko, and makes him realize just how serious this is. "They're going to be my destruction, but it's just the kind of love that even though it's killing you and you can tell that you're just burning each other to ashes you just want _more_."

Zuko has never experienced that. But he says, "You three have a long history together. I can understand why you'd be conflicted."

"It's not just _conflicted_. It's like... I finally became so independent and I figured out what I wanted, and then they show up again and I'm just... _me _again." Silence.

Ty Lee seems to be thinking and Zuko is even more confused. He watched Mai change right in front of him, destroying their relationship. Azula is vaguely different, cold to a new degree. And Ty Lee is the most changed of them all. And now, he can tell, they are trying to pretend that none of those changes exist. It is those changes that make Zuko think he has a chance to help Azula change, to help her recover. They are the key... but also the possibility to completely ruin her. It is messy, very messy.

"There's nothing wrong with you. I liked you before and I like you now," Zuko offers feebly but Ty Lee does not seem to care.

"She makes me so angry, Zuko. But part of me is angry because of _guilt_. And then I realize that I'm just more angry." Pause. "She asked me to marry her. Your sister just showed up and asked me to _elope _with her after she ran off." Ty Lee scoffs as Zuko's eyes flash wide. "She's horrible. And she just thinks I'm her _property _or something... Maybe I was. But I don't want to be that person anymore."

"Then leave. No one is forcing you to stay here. If you're happier with Suki and everybody..." Zuko trails off at the look in Ty Lee's eyes.

"I love them like I've never loved anybody. I've never really been able to make real connections with people. I have a lot of friends, and I love people to be around me. And I love people to like me and I demand that boys tell me twenty words to describe my beauty before I let them fuck me." Silence. Zuko did not need to know that last part. "But I have a connection to them. Just my fucking luck, huh?"

Ty Lee laughs mirthlessly and Zuko does not know what to say. Her cheeks are pinker than her clothes, and it is not from embarrassment; it is from simmering anger beneath the surface.

"Then stay," Zuko says and Ty Lee makes a growling noise. He inhales sharply.

"You're not very helpful," Ty Lee says, cocking an eyebrow. Zuko shrugs. "I guess I'll stay a few days and figure it out from there."

"Good plan," Zuko offers and Ty Lee rolls her eyes.

Messy. Very messy.

* * *

><p>"What do you want me to say to our parents?" Zuko asks Azula at their first breakfast together. She is confused, glancing between her friends.<p>

Ty Lee is battling indecision and the skin of an orange. Mai sips tea and looks half asleep and Zuko has two sheets of paper at either side of them, one addressed to each parent. He even used the nice parchment for their imprisoned father, how sweet.

"How about nothing? I am perfectly content with father and mother thinking that I'm just missing or possibly dead. Their inability to know if I'm alive or not brings me great pleasure," Azula says and Zuko makes a small groaning noise. "Did you tell them that Mai and Ty Lee found me?" Another groaning noise. "You are such a _tattletale_! I can't do anything without you _tattling_. How old are you, ZuZu?"

"I got a letter from Mai saying that you were _dying_; I thought it was necessary to tell our parents," Zuko says sharply, looking annoyed. Azula pouts and Ty Lee takes a deep breath, squirting orange onto her light pink sleeve.

"I don't understand why you had to do that," Azula snarls and Mai shrugs.

"I don't understand why you threw yourself off of a cliff," Zuko retorts sharply

Silence. Azula pours herself a cup of tea and decides it is not on her best interest to argue.

"How are those dear people who conceived us?" Azula asks, her voice slightly high and uncomfortable. She is even more displeased to be here than the three people sitting beside her.

Zuko looks uncomfortable. "The same as you left them. I wouldn't have told them if I knew you were okay. Would you really want them to not know if you were dying?"

"Well, father can't leave prison to visit my death-bed. So I don't care," Azula says bitterly and Mai cringes, sloshing some of her tea on her wrist and cursing. Ty Lee studies her orange very closely and puts it in her mouth.

"I'm just going to tell them that you're alive," Zuko sighs, starting on the letter to his mother. "And that you love them both very much."

"Zuko, that will look _so _suspicious. They're going to think you killed her," Mai remarks with a small chuckle.

"I wouldn't kill Azula," Zuko snaps and Mai glares at him. Ty Lee makes a squeaking sound like a mouse being jabbed in the side. "I'm very happy to see her."

"Oh, yes, you're _so _happy to see her. You can barely contain your excitement," Mai snarls and Azula blinks several times quickly. This is getting frightening. "You probably wish she had died."

"That's not true. I was really worried about her!" Zuko exclaims and Mai looks sickly satisfied at getting him to shout. "She's my sister and I─"

"Oh, save it," Azula interrupts and Ty Lee shrinks, looking as if she is trying to hide under the table. "You never loved me and I'm not asking you to. I don't want to be here right now, and believe me, I will leave as soon as possible. And I'm taking Mai, clearly, you don't deserve her."

"I have done nothing wrong! You three were hiding in the middle of nowhere doing adult things while I was trying to run a nation that hates me!" Zuko shouts and Mai has an almost sexual pleasure in her amber eyes. Azula looks about to set the palace on fire and Ty Lee is actually hiding under the table now. "You put me through a horrible experience when you ran off, Azula!"

"Well, lock me back up again, brother. Go ahead," Azula snarls with great conviction and Zuko's face is as red as his scar. He is breathing deeply, trying to remain calm. Zuko has learned to be level headed, but Mai and Azula want him to scream and rage and burn.

"Guys, please leave him alone," Ty Lee whispers as she slides back into her chair from beneath the gilded dining room table. "He means well."

"To you. I bet you spent your whole time on Kyoshi Island fucking his water peasant friends," Azula snaps and Mai's eyes flash in surprise. _That _was unexpected.

"Azula, you haven't revealed anything about your time on the run to us. Would you like me to start making accusations?" Ty Lee says shrilly and Azula's eyebrow twitches.

"This is ridiculous." Azula stands up and leaves without eating. She does not give a _fuck _what Zuko thinks, much less what Mai and Ty Lee do.

She resigns herself to her room.

* * *

><p>"Can I sleep in here?" Ty Lee asks as Mai is brushing her teeth and Azula is opening the window for the night. She has just pushed open the door to Azula's room, after avoiding both Azula and Mai after the fiasco at breakfast.<p>

"I don't see why not," Azula remarks with a shrug.

Ty Lee takes a deep breath. Maybe she should leave.

Maybe she should. They do not kiss or touch; they simply lie there together, the three of them, in uncomfortable silence. Ty Lee is a burden on them, she supposes. She is likely why Azula tried to kill herself.

But as she lies in the dark with her eyes gently closed, she times her breath with theirs, and all feels right in the world.

Isn't _that _sick?

But then she sees Azula's expression when Ty Lee denied her proposal of marriage. And she remembers exactly why she should hate them.

Isn't _that _sick?

* * *

><p>"You want to change me," Azula says to Zuko as they sit alone in the courtyard. They brushed across each other and wound up sitting and staring at a fountain together silently. "I don't want to change."<p>

"I don't need you to change." Silence. Zuko picks at his lip. "I want you to, yes. But only because I think you can."

"I'm not like you. I wasn't raised like you. You had the benefit of your doting uncle and..." Azula shrugs. Zuko does not need to know any more than that. "It won't work like that. Not to mention, you _had _to change."

Zuko pauses, thinking through his words carefully. Azula chose to sit beside him and not run off because she wanted to talk to him, regardless of her feigned disinterest. Now he only has to choose the right words. Hmph.

"You were always good with words," Zuko says finally and Azula cocks an eyebrow. "I wasn't. I'm not able to convince people of things like you. But I think you'll realize it's the best choice."

"No," Azula replies with startling conviction, and a semblance of emotion in her voice. "I will fight until the end. You can't bring me down."

Azula stands up and Zuko's heart skips a beat. Wrong words. She starts to walk away and Zuko thinks quickly.

"I don't want to defeat you. I want to make up for betraying you," Zuko says loudly and Azula stops walking away. She does not turn to face him, but he can tell she is listening intently. "I was the first person to betray you, Azula. When I left during the eclipse. Don't think I don't know that."

Her fingers move slightly, as if fishing for a response out of the air. Hesitantly, she shakes her head and walks back into the palace without acknowledging him.

Zuko sighs to himself.

* * *

><p>The fourth night of their stay, Ty Lee wakes to Azula getting out of bed. She stumbles when she walks and Ty Lee contemplates getting up or not. Azula slips out of the room in silence and Ty Lee takes a deep breath. No, <em>no<em>, it is not her mess to get into. It just isn't.

Ty Lee hesitates, blinks for a long time, and then gets up and follows Azula. She murmurs something and Ty Lee realizes she is asleep. It is the same sort of thing she breathes in her sleep in the nightmares that are so vivid they are more potent than reality half of the time. The only recurring word, _father_.

Ty Lee reaches for her slowly, intending to wake her. Azula is up with a gasp before Ty Lee even touches her. Her eyes flutter and she looks around and then sinks onto the floor, her knees touching her chin. Ty Lee stands as still as the statues that line the alcoves in the walls.

"Are you okay?" Ty Lee whispers hesitantly, moving her hand away from Azula's face.

Azula slowly nods. "Did you follow me?"

"I didn't... yes... I guess." Ty Lee feels queasy.

"I sleepwalk sometimes," is all Azula reveals as she slowly stands up. Her hands are shaking and when Ty Lee touches her she can feel that Azula's pulse is out of control.

It is then that she makes her decision. She is staying. As much as she just wants to throttle Azula and slap Mai, they need her. And Ty Lee has only ever wanted to be _needed_, so desperately, that she was the only one who could fulfill the need.

She takes Azula by the waist, expecting the princess to protest, but Azula allows her to guide her back to their room.

As Azula's body melts into her, Ty Lee smiles faintly.

Sick as it is, Mai and Azula _need _her.

* * *

><p>Ty Lee has made her decision. She hates herself for it, but she has made her choice, and it is to stay with Azula and Mai. She feels ridiculous for this; they fill her with a virulent rage. But, part of her sees this as a chance to right so many wrongs.<p>

She looked at their bodies last night and thought about how much she had to make up for. There has always been this part of her that felt empty, after she grew older. She thought it was maturity and realizing that the world is not always pleasant. For some things, there is not a positive spin. But something that she finds lacking in her life is them, is the loose ends, is the Fire Nation she hides from.

The acrobat's body is sweltering hot as she starts unpacking in the guest room. Mai walks in without knocking and Ty Lee does not stop folding and unfolding clothes. A smile briefly flickers on Mai's lips that Ty Lee altogether misses.

"You're staying?" Mai asks, her arms wrapped around herself. Ty Lee nods slowly; she does not know what else to say. There are no words to describe the fact that she wants to change things, although Azula changes but in death and Mai is immovable.

"There's a lot here I haven't done," Ty Lee says, not revealing more than that. She feels that finding herself has always been important to her.

And she lost herself somewhere in this palace.

Now, she will seek it out.


	8. cinquefoil

A/N: Notice as of 12/15/14: I need some time on this because I'm really displeased with the plot of the remaining chapters, and am doing a complete rewrite to make it higher quality. It's going to take about two weeks, hopefully less. I thought I could finish it faster but it's been eleven days since the last update and I need to be honest with myself.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Eight<strong>

**Cinquefoil - (**_**beloved daughter**_**)**

* * *

><p>"What's your favorite part, hm? Staring at the ceiling for ten minutes?" Azula demands with a mocking twist of her lip. "Do tell."<p>

Azula and Mai are sitting in an unused living room, glad to be alone. Zuko has been nudging Azula towards his desire for her to reform, and Ty Lee has been encouraging it like a fool. And so Azula is in utter bliss as she sits and mocks Mai with a certain pleasure her cold body lost long ago.

"There's more to sex than staring at the ceiling," Mai groans, rolling her eyes and slowly shaking her head. "When I say I like sex with men, you should stop questioning it."

"Yes, but you've never had sex with a _man_. You've only had sex with _Zuko_," Azula purrs and Mai rolls her eyes.

"Just because Zuko and I don't work out anymore doesn't mean I dislike him. Or that I regret anything we did together. I never regretted you even after you tried to murder me with lightning," Mai says with a cocked eyebrow and Azula studies her with a small, devious smirk.

"You'd rather have sex with me than a man, though, wouldn't you?" Azula purrs and Mai rolls her eyes. "Go on, you know you would."

Azula is advancing on Mai and Mai does not know if she should run or divert attention or accept. But she simply stands there as Azula moves to her with the grace of a dancing flame about to burn out of control.

Mai realizes that Azula is not going to give up her pursuit and she must admit she likes it. Being _desired _almost means more than who she is being desired by, and Azula has often in her life gotten what she wanted by making people feel _special_. It suddenly makes sense why Ty Lee fell head over heels in love with her and Mai could only see it as a complicated and overly sexual relationship.

But Azula sets one hand on Mai's hip and the other in her sleek raven hair in one fluid motion, something that always feels like it comes from her bending. She bites Mai's lips and Mai laughs, not the answer Mai was looking for. But when she closes her mouth from the amused snicker, Azula's lips are on hers again.

Their tongues meet and twist and tangle and fight. With some vague motions of slender hands that feel bony yet tempting against Mai's lukewarm skin, cold and causing goosebumps, Azula is met by melodic moans from the girl who shows nothing. _Victory_.

Mai undoes Azula's hair as they are in motion, towards the sofa. Neither of them cares about how exposed they are, or that they are in the middle of the palace, or that Azula could be gone at any moment. All that matters are the moans and the tide of each other's breathing.

When Azula feels Mai's knees hit the sofa she pushes and Mai likes it. Azula lowers herself onto Mai, straddling her with her hair now undone and falling like a dark curtain around her body. Mai's eyes linger on how some of it is stuck inside of her shirt, between her bra and her alabaster skin.

Another long, heated kiss from Azula's cold lips makes them both burn like liquor tossed onto an open flame. And Azula feels a rush of heat to her lower body.

And in time with the warm kisses and icy caresses, Azula begins to grind her hips down into Mai. It simply feels right as they are trapped in a time capsule, far away from the problems of today. Nothing matters anymore, not the possibility of prison or past relationships with Ty Lee and Zuko, just the feeling of each other and the desperate need pulsing within their bodies.

Azula reaches down and Mai flinches for a brief second, as if Azula is about to strangle or finish her, but she removes half of Mai's clothes and her own shirt, letting the red fabric fall to the scratched but polished wooden floor.

The princess presses her lips to the newly exposed clavicle of Mai. Her lips linger there for a breath moment.

Kisses trail down Mai's body as she moans. Azula lingers, stopping at Mai's hip. Azula stands up slowly, the union broken by the need to remove difficultly placed clothing. Mai sits up as Azula moves to her, their lips meeting with a forceful and wounded passion.

As their tongues move together, Mai slips off her own panties. She pulls Azula towards her an at first the princess resists being taken control of, but she goes with it if only to make this last longer.

Azula presses her lips to Mai's hip once more and slides her tongue down her skin.

As Mai's fingers untangle from her hair, Azula pulls apart from her only to be dragged back.

"You're not escaping that easily," Mai murmurs, kneeling on the sofa. Azula digs her fingers into Mai's skin and finds it inflicts far less pain after being forced to clip them to human proportions.

She removes the rest of Azula's clothes, surprised at Azula simply giving in and moving with Mai's hands. It makes it harder. It makes it more difficult to fathom everything Azula has ever done to her. And Mai finds herself surrendering what she has been to what Azula is and maybe remembering each other as they used to be is the wrong way to go.

Azula lies there, naked, a slightly amused expression on her lips and eyes as if this is not heated and complicated and passionate. Mai slips on top of her, briefly savoring her, briefly realizing she does not look remotely healthy, despite her intoxicating curves.

But before anything progresses further, they are interrupted. Mai's first thought is Zuko and she nearly screams, but it is Ty Lee. Azula is immovable; Mai is swallowing. Why does this sort of thing have to happen?

"Zuko... told me to get you two for dinner," Ty Lee says, staring, staring mostly at Azula and then glancing at Mai's glow and realizing how much fun they have been having. At least she does not break a lamp, but she can see the blood trickling from Azula's hand and the tears that wanted to trickle from Azula's eyes.

"You want to tag in?" It isn't an invitation; it is a mocking remark from Azula's barbed tongue. Mai is wracked with guilt, removing her fingertips from Azula, where she was about to penetrate her.

"You don't have to be mean to her," Mai murmurs and Azula's expression steels.

It dies. The heat and passion and what felt something like love dies.

Ty Lee turns and leaves before Azula can say anything else. Her shoulders shudder with sobs and Mai peels herself from Azula's skin.

Azula pulls on her own clothes as Mai sits naked on the coffee table.

"I feel terrible," Mai sighs and Azula rolls her eyes.

"You two did it to me without _feeling terrible_," Azula says sharply and Mai knows she is right. Ugh. This is far too complicated.

"I feel like this relationship is bound to just be a triangle. It's never going to be a happy, balanced romance. It will always be a triangle. And aren't you fortunate enough to be in the middle," Mai says dryly and Azula fights the urge to slap her.

"We're competitive girls who have never had to share," Azula says with a small shrug. Mai eyes her clothes as if they will leap onto her body if she stares hard enough at them. "Of course it's difficult." Silence. "Right now, you're winning."

"Good to know," Mai groans, finally seizing her underwear.

Azula leaves her, drifting away carelessly. How she can dole out so much damage and feel nothing, Mai can almost understand. But Azula _cares _about things. But Azula has _passion_. And all of it has been snuffed out, leaving a cold, dark room where a flame used to burn so brightly within the princess.

Mai sighs. This is too complicated.

* * *

><p>"So you tried to kill yourself?" is the first thing her father has to say after three years.<p>

Figures. Of course, figures. But she finds him more honest than Zuko, which is a significant flip over the past half decade.

"Yes," Azula replies, her arms wrapped around herself.

She has come to visit her after telling Zuko it would be conducive to her recovery, and she felt the need to see her. Playing up that she thought he would be worried about her and playing dumb when Zuko tried to explain to her that father did not care if she lived or died. Of course Azula knows that he cares about no life but his own, but she needs to see him and Zuko is gullible.

"I'm assuming he wants to turn you around." Ozai does not need to specify who he is talking about.

"I've come a long way without him meddling," Azula says and Ozai does not understand.

He examines her closely in the dim light and sees that she is very different. Something about the way she holds herself, or maybe the fact that she isn't a teenager anymore, or, for that matter, a little girl anymore. Azula was old before she learned to be young and stone cold before she learned how to cry; Ozai said that once but he cannot quite recall to who.

_"No," Ozai says, shaking his head slowly. "I'd watch out for you more than any Earth Kingdom dignitary. You're as slick as an oil spill on an iceberg... and twice as toxic."_

_ "Thank you, father." Teasing, her words. Teasing._

_ Normal. They are normal for a moment. Normal._

"So, what drove you to the edge?" Ozai asks, sounding curious and not concerned. But Azula did not expect him to worry about her.

"Romantic confusion," Azula replies and Ozai laughs. Her expression sours as she stares at him, looking so gleeful about his daughter's descent.

"Who is she?" Ozai asks and Azula's stomach twists. The only person who would say _she_ because he actually _knows _her. The only person who ever made an effort to know anything about her life. The only person who ever hurt her and she never got to hurt them back.

"Does it matter?" is Azula's response and Ozai simply shrugs. "There are two."

"A love triangle? Well, that certainly isn't how I imagined your life would turn out, I have to admit. A _love triangle_." Ozai slowly shakes his head.

"Mai and Ty Lee." And he laughs again. Azula is moments away from tearing his spine from his body when he stops.

"They still chase after you even after everything?" Ozai asks, studying Azula closely. She shrugs feebly. "I genuinely thought they were smarter than that." Pause. "Well, I genuinely thought Mai was smarter than that." Pause. "Mai would be a good Fire Lady."

"She and Zuko are very over. Very over," Azula says and Ozai cocks an eyebrow.

"Startling. He must be very heartbroken that she's more interested in you," Ozai says and there is a brief silence. "However, I'm not very interested in my children's _love lives_. I _am _interested in how you convinced Zuko to let you come see me."

"I told him it would be conducive to my recovery," Azula says with a small, wicked smirk.

"So, are you going to turn your life around?" Ozai asks and Azula shrugs.

"It depends. I haven't decided yet. I'm not exactly in a position to deny him. And Zuko and I have always... well, we never hated each other as much as you wanted us to," Azula says and Ozai looks more surprised than he did when Azula walked into the room.

"That's absurd," Ozai declares, suddenly defensive.

"That you tried to pit us against each other or that having your mother abandon you tends to make children bond?" Azula inquires, cocking an eyebrow. The rush of power is almost erotic. "Or that I know how to use Zuko and he does not know how to use me?"

Ozai is silent in response. Finally, he speaks, "There was no reason for you two to hate each other. I imagine with all the rivalry removed now that you have no chance at power, you two can become best friends as you were always destined to be. It will be _adorable_. The Fire Lord and his little baby sister."

Azula's fingers twitch and Ozai's eyes glint. But she does not attack, as he imagined she would.

"Don't try to provoke me," Azula says sharply and Ozai shrugs.

"So, what are you looking for?" Ozai asks and Azula realizes she has not thought very carefully.

"Advice," Azula says and he laughs even harder. "If you'd rather me look elsewhere, I can."

"I don't understand why you didn't run as soon as you weren't forced to be around me. This excludes, of course, Zuko trying to exploit our relationship," Ozai says, his eyes flickering up and down Azula's form. She is shrinking as she speaks to him and he picks up on it, just as she can see that he shakes ever so slightly.

"I love you," Azula says and Ozai does not laugh as she expected him to. He looks slightly pained. "Look, I'm... at a bit of a crossroads right now. I've managed to secure myself enough that I'm fairly certain I'm not going to get sent to prison, which is good. And so help me I _will _kill myself if Zuko tries to send me back to the asylum. But I have to... father, I have to do something with my life now. Running was easy, coming home is hard."

Ozai pauses, thinking carefully.

"I can't tell you what to do with your life, Azula," Ozai says and she is surprised.

After everything he has put her through, after everything he forced upon her and every second of her day being controlled by him, he now says he cannot help her. Azula does not know how to respond to that without getting angry.

But she takes a deep breath and remains cold. Icy, chilly, frozen.

"You have to have some advice, whether I want to hear it or not," Azula says and Ozai looks at her closely.

"I can't help you."

Silence.

* * *

><p>"I'm not angry about you and Mai," Ty Lee says, stroking Azula's neck. It is a strange position but Azula fell into it after walking into Ty Lee's guest bedroom and apologizing. "Thank you for apologizing. I think I've had a total of two apologies from you in my life."<p>

"Zuko keeps telling me to, erm, become _good _or something," Azula says with a small smirk. She enjoys the feeling of Ty Lee's fingers against her skin and then feels strange about how cold she remains when she felt so heated with Mai.

"I find it hard to believe you're listening to him," Ty Lee replies with a small smile. Azula shrugs.

"I don't intend to." Silence. Azula toys with the hem of the blankets on the bed. Her head rests on Ty Lee's lap and her thoughts are haunted only by her father and her father only.

_"You acted out sexually because of your abusive childhood."_

_ "I don't think you know me. Don't act like you know me," Azula snarls but no one fears her. She could kill them all, kill them all. But why doesn't she? Why doesn't she?_

_ "Did you love your friends?"_

_ "No. Of course not. Why would I?"_

"Do you consider this a love triangle or a romantic relationship?" Azula asks, blinking away the memory. Forgetting is so much harder than remembering. Memories pop up instantly, but forgetting them is work.

"I don't know what it is. I think we're all just confused. When we were young it was different, but when we were young we were different people."

"Don't say smart things. It's jarring," Azula says and Ty Lee takes it as a compliment. Although she wonders how much of Azula's abuse she can stomach before she snaps.

"I am a little jealous when I see you with her," Ty Lee admits, a little anger in her words but a touch of humor. Azula is not sure what to make of it.

"Let's make her _very _jealous, then," Azula purrs, sitting up and pressing her lips against Ty Lee's.

Ty Lee, if she valued her sanity, would push Azula away. _We should just be a trio of friends like normal girls. What we did was all because we were so fucked up... _courses through her mind but what courses through her veins is pure fire.

They are intertwined together for breathless, forceful moments before Azula separates herself for a moment to remove her robe and her bra. Ty Lee is unsure what to do as she reaches for her own light pink nightgown, but Azula seizes it and removes it violently. Gasp. Ty Lee likes it more than she should.

When their lips return together, Azula sucks on Ty Lee's lower lip. The arc of the acrobat's back is welcome as they press their mostly clothed centers together.

Ty Lee moans but it is swallowed by Azula's lips as she forces them together again.

Their bare cleavage presses together as the kisses become far messier and more frantic. Ty Lee feels an anger that guides her to push Azula onto her back. Azula's eyes flash at the control being torn from her, but any protest is killed by Ty Lee's lips trailing down her.

Her teeth dig into Azula's skin and the princess is stunned and confused as light pink lips leave bruises on pale skin. Ty Lee's lips touch her pink nipple and Azula recoils abruptly.

"Did I hurt you?" Ty Lee asks hesitantly, looking at the marks on Azula's skin. But the princess is completely vacant for a chilling moment.

_White skin, red mouth, dark hair and stark naked ─ she is the object of his desire and she hates herself for it. _

"No," Azula says before realizing she needs to clarify. She looks at the bruises and can only think of trying to hide bruises, wearing her hair down when she went to school to hide those around her neck. Avoiding anyone seeing her change her clothes to hide the ones on her body. They did not look like ones beaten onto a child by a parent, as was common. They looked like the ones that Ty Lee has sucked onto her skin.

"No?" Ty Lee murmurs, looking concerned. Her throbbing heat is the least of her worries right now. The idea of breaking Azula has been ever present in her mind of late.

"I just was thinking. Let's keep going." Azula pounces on Ty Lee and she does not fight.

Ty Lee tries to be lost in the sound of Azula's pleasure, the buck of her hips, the fire that Ty Lee feels as Azula burns like a glacier and Ty Lee like a volcano. But as she lies Azula down and the princess parts her legs, Ty Lee feels slightly weak.

This is going to do more harm than good but Azula has seized Ty Lee's wrist forcibly. Ty Lee bends to her will. She wants to scream at Azula, to punch her in the gut, but she just lets Azula guide her fingertips to Azula's navel.

Ty Lee circles her fingertip around Azula's clit and pushes two fingers into wet heat.

Pleasure and regret. Pleasure and regret.

* * *

><p>Azula wakes in Ty Lee's arms and leaves her room, pulling on clothes and making herself look presentable enough. It is not as if the servants don't whisper regardless. She feels weak as she slips back into her bedroom and finds that Mai is not there. Of course she isn't; she is probably pissed off and Azula will have to deal with it. Or perhaps she has curled up with Zuko for the night, in which case Azula will be pissed off.<p>

These emotions are complicated.

Azula strips in front of her mirror as she usually does. She looks at the marks, love bites. Just love bites. But she feels bile rising in her throat and she runs to the bathroom, only in a bra and panties, leaning over the sink and coughing violently.

Vomit rises in her throat and she loses control of her body. That sensation only makes it worse. She throws up red, but she thinks it is wine and not blood. Too purplish to be blood. Breathing in deeply, she leans against the sink and bites back tears. She cannot cry; that would let him win.

She cannot sleep here, not in this room. Gathering her clothes and tying up her hair, she walks into the palace in search of somewhere else to spend the night. When she reaches the wing leading to the side of the palace reserved for guests, she sees Zuko awake, gazing at papers but not taking in what is written on them.

"Hey," Azula says and Zuko jumps, banging his head on the wall. She snickers as he curses under his breath.

"You can't sneak up on people like that. When I hear your voice my first instinct is to run as fast as I can," Zuko says, his cheeks flushed nearly the color of his scar. Azula smiles faintly and Zuko does not know what to make of it.

"You know, I don't know what you expect from me. I'm not you," Azula says, sitting down across from him. He looks at her closely.

"I would be surprised if you ever became completely _good_," Zuko says, stacking the papers he was pretending to read and brushing them aside. "But I want you to try to do _something_, because you have eighty or ninety years left in your life and you don't want to spend it in a cage."

"No. I don't," Azula murmurs, frustrated to agree with him. She wants to say more but the words stick in her throat. Talking about her feelings borders on impossible. It is far easier to pretend that she is devoid of emotion.

"I'm sorry that I left you," Zuko says.

"You left a lot of times," Azula replies and Zuko is surprised. He imagined she would be more dismissive.

"I know," Zuko says. The lights are growing dim and he can barely see her, just that her form is vaguely different. Just that instead of the room raising several degrees when she enters, he feels a chill around Azula.

It hits him then that she has given up. Azula would _never _surrender, never give up on her passion that burned bright and powerful. Even when she was completely defeated and in chains she never stopped fighting. Most of the time, that involved trying to kill him. But now she has simply resigned herself to fate.

That is why she is so cold. Because she has given up. It is easier for her to just frost over and hollow out than confront. And maybe Zuko does not blame her. But seeing the fire in Azula die is painful to him, for some reason.

Rekindling her would be unwise, he knows. As an intelligent person, keeping her quiet and cold is easiest. It will make sure she does not try anything or send the country into a civil war. But as her brother, and someone who has always respected her and... even loved her. He wants to see her burn again.

And he thinks Mai and Ty Lee want that too.

"People care about you," Zuko says and Azula examines him closely.

"I know. I'm not blind," Azula snaps and he realizes he is making no progress whatsoever. "I'm not depressed or miserable. I've accepted my fate and I can see that _disturbs _you. But you're not a hero, Zuko. Just because you won a war doesn't mean you were on the right side. You're not a hero. And you're not my hero."

Zuko hesitates, thinking about her words.

She gets up, her lip trembling slightly, and walks away.

Azula sleeps in an empty guest room, choking on dust for the entire night.

She dreams of her father.

Zuko does too.

* * *

><p><em>Azula is in the bath. The water is scalding and steaming as she lingers in it. Pink has faded into clear as she picks off wax stuck to the porcelain. She peels it away as she wishes she could peel away her skin.<em>

_ "Oh, uh, I didn't mean to walk in on you," stammers Ty Lee. Azula glances up._

_ "Why are you in my house?" Azula asks, confused, not accusing._

_ "I just... you said to come over and I'm late, actually," Ty Lee says, cocking an eyebrow._

_ Azula envies her naivety greatly. The way she can just scamper about happy-go-lucky and not worry about a thing. And she studies her closely, hoping the mascara stains on her face can be explained away by the steam and water and not the tears that caused them._

_ "I forgot," Azula says and Ty Lee is surprised. "The Kyoshi Warrior meeting..."_

_ Azula blinks away any remaining tears and forces herself out of the water. Ty Lee looks at the burns on her skin first and how they are swiftly fading, the act of it unnatural yet natural. Then her eyes linger on the droplets of water on shining pale skin and she feels her insides twist. The perfection of her body is burned into Ty Lee's retinas as she slips forward and presses her lips against Azula's._

_ But Azula pushes her away. Ty Lee can only blink as Azula shakes her head and wraps a red towel around herself._

"Why is she so upset?" Mai asks Ty Lee softly. As soon as Azula disappeared to the other guest room, Mai crept into Ty Lee's room. She was expecting to find both of them, to sink into both of their bodies, but Ty Lee is alone.

"I think she went to talk to her father," Ty Lee yawns, squinting at Mai in the darkness. She would rather be sleeping than discussing Azula. "You know, we never talk about anything but her. There's definitely something between us _other _than Azula."

"Yeah, I guess..." Mai does not know what else to say. "But why is she upset?"

"I don't know. She just left while I was asleep."

Ty Lee thinks of the bruises on Azula.

And thinks of how she once found similar bruises on her body while they were together, in bed. And she thinks about the day Azula came out of the bath and pushed Ty Lee away, and how she overanalyzed it for the entirety of the stay in Ba Sing Se. She had those bruises then too.

Ty Lee touches Mai's hair and kisses her neck.

And tries to forget, forget, forget.

"Why is remembering so easy but forgetting so hard?" Ty Lee whispers.

Mai shrugs.


	9. tuberose

A/N: This had to go on hiatus because it had no plot. My goal in writing it was to be over 100k words, _but _unsurprisingly, that made it feel kind of like an essay with no content fluffed up with extra words and pointless paragraphs in order to reach the word count. So I needed to think of a plot, cut the incredible, incredible amount of filler, and make something actually good.

It now falls at around 80k words. I tried to salvage the length by drawing out the plot, which wound up extending the hiatus pointlessly by just making the problem worse.

So, anyway, this is still a novel length Maizulee, but it is shorter and more polished now.

Thank you so much for your patience.

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter Nine<strong>

**Tuberose - (**_**dangerous pleasures**_**)**

* * *

><p>Pirates. Playing pirates. That's how it starts; a conversation about playing pirates. Because the three girls used to play pirates and get drunk on starlight and sometimes stolen liquor. But eventually all games end and they have to be adults.<p>

"Do you remember when we used to play pirates?" Azula asks, running her fingernails through her raven hair. She catches some snags and realizes she is not doing a very good job taking care of herself.

She and her friends are in their shared bedroom in the palace, and everything has been a mess lately. Azula seems to be the only won winning at the love triangle, and it all has gotten messy. Azula does not sleep, Ty Lee has still been struggling with her desire to go back to Kyoshi Island, and Mai is vaguely livid at Zuko.

"That was kind of fun," Mai remarks, laughing slightly to herself. "I particularly enjoyed tying Ty Lee to trees."

"Hmph," is Ty Lee's response. "Why couldn't I ever be a pirate? Why did I have to be captured?"

"You weren't imaginative enough," Azula chimes in response and Ty Lee simply rolls her eyes.

_Pirates. Playing pirates. That's how it starts. Thirteen year old girls playing pirates three months before Mai will move away._

_ "We're definitely too old for this," Mai sighs as she ties ropes around Ty Lee, whom is not complaining but has a look of frustration in her wide eyes._

_ It is dull, hot, summer. Azula looks somewhat bored, drawing lines in the dirt with a stick burnt into the shape of a sword. _

_ "You voted to do it," Azula replies and Mai shrugs. She has to admit Azula has a point. And so she finishes tying Ty Lee up, who still looks gloriously displeased about being the prisoner again._

_ "I know," Mai sighs, tying the knots with the expertise of a seasoned sailor. It was something she did, tying knots. She had a variety of hobbies to try to quietly quell her boredom._

_ The game begins and it is clever, brilliant and somewhat funny. Azula has all of the ideas, Ty Lee has melodrama, and Mai makes a fine pirate. The violence of the game is evident, and by the end, Azula has slashed the ropes from the tree and she and Ty Lee are locked in a pretend fight. Most kids do not have the soldier-esque expertise to make it look so realistic._

_ Azula burns Ty Lee by accident and does not apologize. Ty Lee punches her in the face and Azula shrieks in pain. Mai cringes and thinks she may have to interfere as Azula pops up, landing a blow on Ty Lee, who whimpers._

_ But Ty Lee, as she lunges forward for another punch, presses her lips against Azula's. It is fierce, and might as well have been another hit. Azula looks as startled as if she has been punched. But she leans into it, slipping one hand behind Ty Lee's back._

_ Their lips break apart for a moment as Mai stands back, feeling moderately useless. They open their mouths when they kiss, which Mai finds both gross and mildly arousing. Their tongues touch and brush across lips and Mai finds herself very uncomfortably filled with longing._

_ "You guys stop," Mai says abruptly. "You're like stray cats."_

_ They are going to get together. And Mai is going to... something. Certainly she won't wind up marrying Zuko like she was intended to since she was a baby. Given that he is exiled forever. All she really has is them, and her attraction to both of them. But they are in love with each other, and Mai thinks she may be left behind._

_ Azula peels herself from Ty Lee and walks to Mai. "Stray cats, hm?" she inquires, looking amused. Mai crosses her arms and turns her expression to steel. But Azula is undeterred by her ice cold demeanor._

_ She kisses her on the lips. _

_ "Now I'm so confused." Pause. "That was, I liked that. But now I'm confused."_

_ Azula pretends to be thinking as Mai feels ridiculous. Ty Lee watches with an alien and blossoming lust in her young eyes._

_ "What's to be confused about? I want to sleep with you," Azula says with a shrug. Her confidence about sex is slightly unnerving to Mai, given her age and inexperience._

_ "And her." Mai nods at Ty Lee who perks up like a pet whose name has just been mentioned in passing._

_ "Yes, and her," Azula purrs._

_ And she kisses Mai again._

"Do you guys remember when you dripped candle wax all over me?" Ty Lee whines. She looks at the candles lining the room in varying states of melting. She notices the amongst the red, one is slightly purple. "That was part of _playing pirates_."

"No, that was prisoner," Azula corrects, lightning the last candle.

It should be mood lighting or something romantic, but honestly it just makes the room smell strongly of incense and Ty Lee feel incredibly dizzy. Mai is reading a book by the light, and Ty Lee just wants to sink into a warm sleep in this hot room. The night is abnormally hot for autumn.

"Ugh, prisoner was the worst," Ty Lee snaps, crossing her arms. "And _I _was always the prisoner."

"Oh, stop complaining," Azula says lightly as Mai smirks. "You always could've escaped."

Ty Lee makes a grumbling noise and sinks further under the silk blankets.

"You know what, Azula, maybe you should be the prisoner this time," Mai says and Azula's smug smile fades instantly. "Go on. Lie down. Be my prisoner."

"No," Azula snaps. Mai cocks an eyebrow. "I said no. I've been enough people's prisoners."

"You want to make things right and redeem yourself... let us have a little fun with you, huh?" Mai offers, sitting up and tucking her book under her pillow.

"I don't condone this," Ty Lee says softly, although her cheeks are flushed with mild excitement, "but I won't stop it from happening either."

"Fine, fine, if you insist. I'll let you play prisoner as if we're _twelve_. If that makes you so happy," Azula says regally in the most melodramatic tone outside of the Ember Island Players. Mai smiles faintly to herself and pats the bed between she and Ty Lee.

Azula lies down with a surprising amount of dignity and rests her arms at her sides. Mai picks up a candle. It drips near her hand but she does not allow it to burn her.

"This won't be _that _effective on Miss Firebending Prodigy, but I feel as if it will make Ty Lee very happy," Mai says and Azula quickly realizes where this is going.

"You know, I may be pretending to be your prisoner, but I am a princess, you know." Pause. And in a darker tone she adds, "And I also will kill you and scoop out your eyeballs with my fingernails."

"It won't even hurt you," Mai says.

Azula opens her mouth for another threat, but Ty Lee's lips meet hers. She sighs and sinks into the mattress. If it _does _disturb her, it is not like they can hold her down for long. It likely is in her best interest to keep Mai and Ty Lee on her side.

"You have to take your clothes off," Mai says and Azula cocks an eyebrow.

"Alright, seeing as I'm a prisoner of war, I'm not going to agree to that. You're going to have to force me. Let's at least be a little realistic with our pretend games," Azula says haughtily and Ty Lee reaches out lightning fast and undoes Azula's robe. "Very forceful," Azula admits, startled that Ty Lee had that in her. "But I let you do it. I could've fought you off if I wanted to."

Mai slowly shakes her head. And Mai takes the candle and lazily trails it along Azula's skin, tipping it so the flame hovers several inches above her pale stomach, enough so Azula could feel the warmth. She is far less impressed than someone without her prowess in firebending would be.

Carefully, Mai flicks her wrist and a drop of wax collides with Azula's navel, the red wax poolin against her smooth skin. She still has remnants of the bruises Ty Lee sucked onto her, which adds to the illusion of prisoner. But Azula does not even flinch.

Ty Lee leans to Azula's ear as Mai moves the candle halfheartedly, and whispers, "I thought we were being realistic with our pretend games. You can at least _act _like you're in pain."

"Hmph." Azula supposes she would be a hypocrite if she didn't. "Well, what if I'm a traitor prisoner of war. And I'm a firebender. There."

Azula does not like the idea of giving someone satisfaction with her pain. It triggers too many childhood memories. It is one thing for her to derive pleasure from a scream, but another for her to give pleasure with gasps of false pain.

"Ugh. Alright," Ty Lee agrees, overacting her frustration. She kisses Azula's neck for a split second before pulling away.

Mai becomes more daring. She parts Azula's legs and the princess looks about to spear Mai's eye with her fingernails, but her morbid curiosity keeps her playing prisoner. Mai runs the tongue of the flame just above Azula's thighs, brushing against the inside.

It is surprisingly enjoyable to Azula. The candlelight turns blue as it touches the inside of Azula's thigh by mistake. A small moan. Ty Lee is intrigued by it, enjoying it more than Mai even thought she would.

The candle lifts, moving in a straight line with Mai's hands. The wax falls, pools, dripping along Azula's protruding bones. Mai has fantasized about doing this to someone before, but it never was with a firebender who would find more enjoyment from burning wax than pain.

Mai lifts the candle from its grazing of Azula's breast to her chin, looking on a power high. Azula finds it sexier than she imagined it would be as she stares Mai down with an unmoving expression. It feels almost like a battle of wills. To Azula, Mai as anything other than passive is attractive. Ty Lee is chewing on her fingernails as she watches the slow build of the burning scene.

And Mai touches the candle to Azula's lips. She expects the princess to throw her off of the bed in rage, but Azula is being incredibly amicable towards this game.

"This isn't even scary," Azula says, touching her tongue to the fire pointedly.

"You be quiet. I will put this candle into your mouth." Mai is not a very convincing jailer, as amused as her amber eyes look.

"I dare you. I double dare you," Azula whispers, intrigued, the fire rising, falling and twisting in cerulean with her breath. Ty Lee tears off a hunk of her nails. This is yet another of Azula and Mai's power plays, and the fact that Azula is lying down and taking it makes her slightly nervous.

"I take dares very seriously," Mai whispers and Azula just cocks an eyebrow.

And Azula finds out Mai is telling the truth when she has a candle in her mouth.

"You're going to kill her!" Ty Lee knocks the candle out, nearly knocking one of Azula's teeth out. Azula coughs and Ty Lee grabs her by the shoulders, pulling her in for a kiss. And then Ty Lee recoils. "Ew, you taste like candle."

Azula just rolls her eyes.

* * *

><p>"Azula, I have some conditions," Zuko says, finally working up the courage to tell her.<p>

"For what?" Azula inquires, crossing her arms. She already does not like this.

"I don't want to lock you up, and I want you to be able to live here comfortably. Even if that means sleeping with two women..." Zuko trails off, his lip twisting in slight frustration. Azula enjoys his jealously almost as much as Mai does. "Look, I promised to redeem you, and that's what I want to do. I was talking to Ty Lee and─"

"I don't care what she wants from me," Azula snaps and Zuko is startled. He has noticed their tension, but Azula always cared for Ty Lee as much as she could care for a person. "I do kind of care what you want from me. Kind of. But when I said I change but in death, I meant it."

Zuko sighs and rubs his sore neck. "I don't need you to make some huge life change and start handing out fire gummies to children. _But _I do want you to try to recover and I want you to try to be a functioning member of society."

"That's asking a lot of me," Azula purrs and Zuko breathes in.

"It's not. You do the impossible all the time, Azula. I think you can do one thing for me." Zuko is silent and so is his sister.

Azula hates to admit that she cares for Zuko. She would rather drown herself than confess that, by far. But if he wants her to try this, she can at least pretend to attempt. And if it keeps her out of the asylum, she supposes she can make a meager effort.

"I'll do it," Azula says with a small sigh. "What do I have to do first?"

"I want to go to talk to father with you," Zuko says and Azula's eyes flash.

"No."

"Yes. Or would you rather go talk to mother?"

"What do you gain from this?" Azula snaps, bristling. Zuko takes slow, meditative breaths. He has to be stone cold and immovable or Azula will bend him to her will.

"I want to start with him. That's all. He probably won't even want to say anything, but I want to make an effort."

"Or do you just want to exploit our relationship for your own personal gain again?" Azula inquires sweetly and Zuko just shakes his head.

"We're leaving in an hour to go to the prison."

Silence. "If that's what it takes, I'll do it. I suppose I owe you after stealing your girlfriend."

The last insult is feeble and weak. Azula tacks it on to try to avoid her feelings. It is so much easier to mock Zuko than to rely on him. But maybe she trusts him more than Mai and Ty Lee. Her feelings on the topic are mixed, and sometimes she winds up wishing she had succeeded in killing herself that day so she would not have to deal with how complex this scenario is.

Azula and Zuko go to the prison in silence. He tries to spark conversation with her, but she is immovable. It is the delicateness of his voice towards her that perturbs her the most. Zuko was rough, brotherly, to her before she wound up ill. And now he treats her like she is made of glass. The suicide attempt probably does not help.

They arrive at their father's cell.

"Azula is trying to change sides, like I did," Zuko declares and Azula rolls her eyes. Ozai sees the gesture from his daughter and realizes she is paying lip service to goody-goody Zuko.

"How sweet," Ozai growls, frustrated Zuko is talking to him again. It happens too often for his liking. But Azula, well, she interests him.

"I want you two to start working through your issues," Zuko says and Ozai realizes he has no idea how deep the issues are. Nor does he have a grasp of what he subjected Azula to by being banished. "So I brought her here. I figured you were an easier first step than mother."

"Most definitely," Ozai admits honestly. "I want to speak alone with her. We won't make much progress with you ogling us."

Zuko takes a deep breath. He would rather be guiding the conversation, but he nods, and leaves Azula and Ozai.

She is tapping her nails on her elbow as he leaves them.

* * *

><p>"Let's go somewhere," Ty Lee whines, hitting her knees together repeatedly as she lies on the sofa. She struggles with <em>sitting still<em>, and Mai finds it strangely endearing. "Let's just get drunk and play pirates."

"That sounds less than mature," Mai comments, watching Ty Lee shake like a leaf. She is like a puppy left inside for too long. "I don't think I even remember how to play pirates."

Mai and Ty Lee are alone together, and it is awkward and uncomfortable. They carried on an extremely one-sided conversation until Ty Lee gave up and they started sitting there in silence. Azula is off talking to her father.

"Do you really think Zuko is going to redeem her?" Mai asks, genuinely curious. She starts prying decorative arrows from the wall. She has had her eye on them for a few days, and she thinks she must be part of the royal family at this point without marriage.

"I don't think she wants to. I want her to, I guess. But I dunno. Azula is Azula and I don't want her to change just to make other people happy. But, well, I _do _want her to change," Ty Lee says with a small, soft shrug.

Mai frees an arrow and the popping sound makes Ty Lee flinch as if something were thrown at her. "I think Zuko has his heart in the right place. He pretty much always does. But he doesn't know how to work with Azula, at all. He doesn't know her very well."

"We could do it," Ty Lee suggests and Mai shakes her head. "What? We could. Just because you broke up with Zuko doesn't mean you should avoid helping Azula because it's his idea."

Mai pulls another arrow off of the wall and sets it on her lap with the first. "I want to help her. Believe me, I do. But Azula doesn't do what she doesn't want to do."

Silence. And Ty Lee asks, "Why do we only talk about her? Even when she was locked up we only talked about her."

"I don't know. She's the glue of this relationship I guess. The body we orbit around or some bullshit. It isn't as if we have anything in common other than her," Mai remarks and Ty Lee slowly shakes her head.

"We're friends. We're _good _friends. There's more to us than Azula," Ty Lee says fiercely, surprised at her own vehemence. Mai examines her for a moment.

"Well then come over here and prove it."

Mai slides down her sleeves.

* * *

><p>Zuko and Azula are still not back after the tryst. Ty Lee lies with Mai, thinking about the candle last night. Thinking about how Mai and Azula's chemistry is so much stronger, so much so that Azula would let Mai stick a candle in her mouth.<p>

Ty Lee was always on the receiving end of that from Azula. She never gave it.

When she closes her eyes, she can only recall the time she stole Azula's lipstick.

_ "I did steal it," Ty Lee murmurs, withdrawing the lipstick from her bag. Given, Azula had stolen it from her first, and she completely thought she could take it back. But the princess noticed, and Ty Lee had no choice but to give in._

_ "I see," Azula says, her hands clasped behind her back._

_ She looks like herself when she is addressing soldiers she is about to send off to die. Ty Lee wears a slightly hopeful expression, although she is pained at the thought of Azula catching her. But Azula reaches one hand forward and plucks away the expensive lipstick, tossing it onto her dresser._

_ "I'm really sorry," Ty Lee murmurs, feeling uncomfortable. Her clothes are a mess; she is a mess. She spent the night at Azula's after they returned from Ember Island, and their sex has been heated with a certain anger._

_ Possibly, trying to set Azula up with someone other than herself may have angered her. But Azula did go on and on about how this was a purely sexual arrangement and it meant nothing. So when Ty Lee flirted, instead of demanding Azula claim her, she tried to get Azula to do the same._

_ Wrong move. Stealing her lipstick back; also the wrong move._

_ In all fairness, Azula stole her heart. And Ty Lee does not think she is getting it back._

_ "I have to think of some kind of inventive punishment for that, don't I?" Azula purrs, raising an eyebrow. She looks absolutely intrigued by the process, and Ty Lee feels a slight discomfort in her core. "Why don't you sit down so I can figure it out?"_

_ Ty Lee scratches at her arm, nods and sits on Azula's bed. The red blankets are still a mess after their night's tryst. Still slightly damp with sweat and more, but partially dried from the sunlight that pours through the window. Ty Lee tries her best not to think about the fact that her family is expecting her or that Azula likely had her father expecting her._

_ "Lie down." Of course she would order someone around. Azula takes far too much pleasure in the ability to completely control people. Ty Lee finds it incredibly hot, but that does not mean she condones it, or thoroughly enjoys it. "And close your eyes."_

_ This is going to be scary, Ty Lee realizes as she complies to Azula's demands. She finds something on her wrists that makes her scream, but she does not open her eyes as Azula is wrapping what feels silken and smooth around her companion's wrists. Ty Lee does not move; she does not want to move._

_ She feels a knee between her legs and that is when her eyes shoot open._

_ "Stop looking," Azula snaps but Ty Lee cannot help but look as Azula is knotting two light orange scarves around dark bedposts._

_ "Are you going to kill me?" Ty Lee asks as Azula plucks up her wrists and tugs against them to test how tight the scarves are. _

_ "Probably not," Azula says lightly with a shrug. Ty Lee frowns faintly._

_ And Azula's lips then touch her shoulder, her neck, and just above her breast. Now Ty Lee is incredibly confused, but she has to admit she likes it. She sincerely hopes she will continue liking it as Azula undoes the front of Ty Lee's shirt, the rest of her clothes impossible to remove due to the imprisonment of her arms._

_ Her rosy lips travel further down, placing another kiss of fire between Ty Lee's ribs. Her skin is now cold with exposure but hot where Azula's lips touch her and she feels a velvety wetness that she wishes were not there. Azula slides her bare thigh against Ty Lee's, brushing their wrinkled skirts up with a single motion._

_ It sends a shiver through Ty Lee and an aching between her thighs. Azula is on top of her now and she wants to touch her, wants to reach for her but she is tied up. It is then she realizes that this is going to hurt, and the gentle kisses and touch of her warm thigh are simply preludes to the main event._

_ Azula runs one fingernail along Ty Lee's body, finally digging her nails into Ty Lee's hip. She screams and then hopes no one has heard. Azula smirks faintly, amused. She slips further and scratches down the inside of Ty Lee's other thigh, causing a whimper and a wash of pain._

_ She removes Ty Lee's panties relatively easily, although Ty Lee does not give her much help, being paralyzed in fear and occupied with the inability to do anything with her arms. Azula runs her fingertips down, further, further and Ty Lee inhales sharply._

_ The princess stops just short of plunging two clawed fingers into the wet, confused heat of Ty Lee. They linger there for a moment as Azula watches with the pleasure of a cat that has caught a small rodent and is torturing it before eating it._

_The shivers of pleasure are─_

"I hear them," Mai says, interrupting Ty Lee's thoughts. And they were getting a little too heated to be healthy.

"I don't want to talk about it."

"He demanded to be alone with you."

"You didn't have to agree to him."

"Azula, this was meant to be a step towards recovery."

"I'm recovered. I'm perfectly recovered, Zuko!"

"You threw yourself off of a cliff! And worse, you're cold and detached!"

"That's how I'm happy! Now leave me alone if you want me to play along with your fucking redemption wet dream!"

The slam of a door. Zuko's exasperated sigh.

Ty Lee restrains herself from running after Azula and strokes Mai's neck.

* * *

><p>That night, Azula lies down and goes to sleep wordlessly. Ty Lee tries to talk to her about the conversation with Ozai, but she reveals nothing. It is an entirely fruitless pursuit, and Ty Lee winds up kissing Mai goodnight and curling up in the bed beside Azula, without touching her.<p>

Mai, unable to take the uncomfortable tension, slips out of Azula's room and bumps directly into Zuko. It could not be more awkward if they tried, and they stand there in the hall for a moment. She takes great pleasure in the fact that her nightgown is sheer and Zuko will just have to deal with that.

And then she remembers their first date.

_"So, uh, do you have... interests?" Zuko asks, twiddling his thumbs. Mai is prying the steel out of a fan in the middle of the restaurant. "You know, things you like?"_

_ "I like..." Mai has to think about that one. "I like people, places and things."_

_ "Cool, me too," Zuko says hopefully and Mai thinks she may have picked a winner._

_ "You like people, places a things?" Mai asks with something that resembles a laugh._

_ Zuko looks massively uncomfortable. She thinks she may love him._

_ She was lucky, perhaps, to have been born to marry him._

"What do you want?" Mai asks sharply and Zuko is again surprised. Her newfound love for Azula and resentment for him is strange and uncomfortable.

"I'm just going to sleep," Zuko says feebly, rubbing his neck. Mai stares at him intensely. "So you three are a thing?"

"You've asked that a couple thousand times. Yes, _we are_. And Ty Lee and I are going to help Azula be redeemed way better than you can," Mai says, crossing her arms.

"I'm her brother. I know her. And I care about her."

"I know her a lot better than you ever did. Maybe you care about her, but I do too." Silence.

_"I know one thing I care about. You," Mai says on the beach._

_ Zuko has never been so in love._

"She needs some people to love her," Zuko offers feebly. Mai grits her teeth.

"We're just pursuing our happy ending. You're not included." More unwelcome vitriol.

"You think this story deserves a happy ending?" Zuko demands, not thinking at all about the consequences of his words. He is just getting sick of the superiority of Ty Lee and Azula and Mai. "It's sick and twisted and some stories just don't. Azula isn't the kind of person who gets happy endings."

"So I guess I'm just guilty by association?" Mai replies sharply, her lips curled in a snarl. She is fighting the urge to slap him to the floor. But she has to be the better person. If she can be the mediator to the madness that is Azula and Ty Lee, she can handle Zuko's bruised ego.

"You are right now," Zuko says and Mai chews on her lip to keep from screaming. She has to have _control_ over the strong emotion she is feeling right now. "Just remove yourself from them."

"And live happily ever after with you? I don't want that anymore. You know, I never really wanted that. And I never will."

Silence.

Maybe some stories don't deserve happy endings.

But this one does.

Mai knows that this one does.


	10. white tulip

**Chapter Ten**

**White Tulip (**_**forgiveness**_**)**

* * *

><p>Azula wakes up between Mai and Ty Lee. It is so easy to forget how her life is now when she wakes to the sound of their breathing. It is always uneven, and never does it match hers. They are all incredibly different yet bound together by tight strands of emotion and loyalty.<p>

Loyalty. It still exists between the three of them despite all that has come to pass. Loyalty.

Princess Azula gets out of bed and puts on her training clothes. She slips through the palace, trying not to think so hard about her altercation with her father. Why Zuko brought her to him, she has no idea. Her brother has always been frustratingly clueless in every facet of life, but he must be a moron to think Azula genuinely wants to be placed in front of her father after he is informed that she is trying to be _more like Zuko._

She walks to her place in the courtyard, which is relatively undisturbed, and she moves into the motions. Her instructor's used to teach her entire combinations in a day, only for her to perfect them by sunset. It was something she was notorious for.

But everything else in her life has come hard, despite what she tells people. She has always preferred to project the image of someone who never has to work. Yet, everything Azula has she gained through blood, sweat and tears.

Her body moves gracefully through the positions. The dancer becomes the dance as she melds with the blaze of cerulean. And in it, as she becomes fire, she can almost forget.

_"Solve the puzzle," father orders as Azula stares at her brother._

_ He looks too afraid to eat._

_ "Why doesn't Zuko have to?" Azula dares to ask. _

_ Father makes Azula solve puzzles and riddles before he allows her to sit down and eat. But Zuko just takes his seat. It sickens her. She did not hate her brother until her mother left. Until mother chose to leave her because she loved Zuko more. Before father started trying to make them hate each other. And Azula finds it easier to comply with Ozai than to try to salvage her relationship with Zuko. And better for her in the long run._

_ "Because I say so. You don't need a better reason than that," Ozai growls and Azula grits her teeth. She wants to protest further, but she gives in._

_ Azula solves the puzzle._

_ She does as she is told._

_ And she hates not herself, nor her father, nor her mother... but Zuko._

Zuko watches Azula without meaning to. He was just passing through when he caught sight of the blue fire licking the clouds and trees. Azula has been utterly passionless since he got she and Mai and Ty Lee. The burning, fiery, broken girl who ranted and raved has become muted and frozen over.

But in her eyes and on her lips is a passion. She firebends with her heart and her soul. The feats she accomplishes are incredible, and the motions insane, and the color transfixing. But it is amazing to watch Azula firebend because of the look in her eyes.

She loves it. And Azula loves nothing.

"What are you staring at?" Azula snaps and Zuko realizes he is caught.

"I was just watching," he admits, rubbing his neck.

"Well... stop," Azula says quietly, turning her back to him and pointedly summoning lightning. _That _Zuko knows she is doing just to unnerve him.

"I'm sorry about how it went with father," Zuko says and the lightning bursts from Azula's fingertips and cleaves a sapling tree in half.

"You're trying. Pathetically. But you're trying," Azula forces herself to say. "I don't want to change."

Zuko opens his mouth to protest but Azula silences him with a single look.

And she continues, "I don't want to change, but I realize I'm out of options. I'm not stupid. I value my freedom and my bending a lot more than I value my dignity or my grudges."

"I don't want to force you," Zuko says and Azula just shrugs.

"Well, make your mind up. Do you want me to change or not?"

"You've already changed. I barely recognize you," Zuko says and Azula looks at him closely. "I don't know if I like it."

"Does my lucidity disturb you?" Her eyes are amused but her lips are hurt and Zuko does not know what to make of it. Reading people was always Azula's thing, not his.

"No. But your lack of passion for anything kind of does," Zuko says and Azula continues gazing at him. He feels incredibly uncomfortable and wonders if that is her intent.

"It's easier to be detached. I quite like it. It feels kind of nice to not care about anything anymore," Azula says earnestly and Zuko does not know what to make of it. Azula is only so open when it serves her, and Zuko cannot figure out what she is getting from this.

"What do you get from this?" Zuko demands and Azula smirks. "Go on."

"Always the same with you. Like Ba Sing Se. I must be exploiting poor innocent ZuZu. With my mind reading powers I figured out that the Avatar was still alive. So it's perfectly okay for you to exploit me, because, well, I would do it, wouldn't I?" Azula says in a haunting monotone.

Zuko feels a chill. "Don't say things like that. You were, you did have plans!"

"What were they? I don't remember," Azula prods, the pain in her face now sheer pleasure.

"I..." Zuko is at a loss for words.

"I had a moment of weakness, and if I didn't, my life would be much better," Azula says sharply. "I would've gained so much by killing you in Ba Sing Se. But I brought you home. I did everything in my power to make it work out, because I knew that if our father found out it was compassion, I would suffer. And then you go and decide to leave. My life ended the day I decided to help you instead of help myself."

"Well, my life ended the day you were born."

"It's my fault, then?"

"Yes. I was banished and burned and everything that ever happened to me was..." Zuko trails off because of the look on her face.

"I'd like to practice alone now. I'm not quite in the mood to seek your divine forgiveness, Fire Lord Zuko," Azula says, her voice constricted with emotion she will not acknowledge.

Zuko wants to argue.

But he walks away.

* * *

><p>As Zuko goes to his office after his fight with Azula, he is quickly interrupted. He thinks at first that it is Azula, and he sincerely hopes she wants to talk out their problems. But it is Mai. She brings a smile to Zuko's lips before he realizes she is with Azula now.<p>

"Zuko, about that fight..." Mai says as she invites herself into Zuko's office. "It was kind of petty and ridiculous. I'm sorry."

Zuko scratches his chin and replies, "I'm in the wrong more than you. I just... I still really like you. Seeing you with Azula is more than hard."

Mai just shrugs. And then frowns for a flicker of a second. She realizes she has to say _something_.

"I love you, just... not that way." It does not help Zuko at all. "You're a good person. And you deserve somebody who loves you wholly. I want to be with them, and... that's not what you want."

"This is just gross and complicated," Zuko sighs, rubbing his neck. Mai purses her chapped lips. "You deserve happiness, or whatever feeling is closest to happiness for you. And I shouldn't let my jealousy ruin that."

"Please don't ruin this," Mai says and Zuko cocks an eyebrow. "They wouldn't say that for sure. I didn't even tell either of them that we tried dating again because I knew they would be jealous and frustrating."

"Then why don't you try with me?" Zuko asks, sounding so hopeful that it wounds Mai. Her chest feels tight as she searches for the right words to say.

"Because that's... I..." Mai shakes her head. Zuko is making this even more difficult than Azula and Ty Lee. Her feelings for him are beyond conflicted. The loathing is there, but she hates Azula and Ty Lee quite fiercely at his point as well. "I'm with them, okay? Just because I don't want to be fighting with you doesn't mean I want to be fucking you."

"I am so confused," Zuko says honestly and Mai just stares at him for a moment.

"Okay, maybe I still like you," Mai says, forcing the words out of her lips. "But you're acting pretty immaturely. I mean, you were gone forever. And I never would've started dating you if we weren't supposed to get married. I always liked them better."

"Okay, then, if you love them, you love them. And I'm sorry for being a dick about it," Zuko says and Mai groans in frustration. He does not know what he has done wrong.

"Stop being so understanding," Mai says sharply and before Zuko can ask what he is supposed to do, she presses her lips against his fiercely.

"I am so confused," Zuko says as the kiss breaks. "Are you angry or not?"

He looks genuinely pained, but Mai pays it no mind. She does not know what she wants right now, but she is sure that Zuko has something to do with it. Probably. He usually does. Or something like that. She is not questioning it as she kisses him again as he stands as still as a statue.

"What's happening?" Zuko asks, killing a good thing.

Mai sighs and breaks away from him for a moment. She uses the time to contemplate the fact that if she follows through with this, she might as well just burn her carefully built relationship with Ty Lee and Azula to a crisp.

But, Mai decides as she rather dramatically throws everything off of Zuko's desk, what they do not know cannot hurt them.

She grabs Zuko's wrist, murmurs, "Don't question this, okay?" and he obeys.

* * *

><p>Mai washes herself after her tryst with Zuko. The water pours over her body in the shower and she is unsure what she should do about what has just happened. Zuko will likely not drop the matter, and Mai is having trouble forgetting it.<p>

One moment she felt as if she wanted nothing more than to wound Fire Lord Zuko, and te next she was lying under him on a fucking desk. She should punch herself for this.

The shower runs cold before she gets out and dresses herself. She walks, her hair dripping onto her silk robe, to Azula's bedroom. She finds the princess sitting on the bed with her knees touching her chin, gazing intently at the wall as she is lost in her thoughts.

Mai pours herself into Azula. It is easier than thinking about the fact that she just betrayed herself and fucked Zuko.

The sun glistens on them through the wide window as Azula still seems like an ice sculpture, motionless and beautiful. Mai fidgets slightly as she tries to think of a way to erase Azula's thousand yard stare.

Consoling Azula is going to erase Zuko's touch on Mai's skin.

"What did your father say to you?" Mai dares to ask as she is alone with Azula. Azula shrugs, looking detached and distant again. Mai does not like that face, or those eyes and she wishes she had thought of a better conversation starter than Ozai.

"Same old bullshit. That he's sorry or something," Azula says and Mai is surprised. Ozai is not the kind of man to apologize, even if it is only to get his way. "He doesn't care about me and I'm well aware of it. I want him to stop pretending he cares."

"Maybe he's not pretending," Mai offers and Azula laughs mirthlessly. "What? He's... horrible, but that doesn't mean he doesn't care about you."

"He wants to use me. That's all he thinks about. I know that because I think that way too," Azula says and Mai is surprised at her blunt honesty. "Do you think I'm responsible for everything wrong with Zuko?"

"No. Of course not. Did he tell you that?" Ugh. Mai wants to throttle herself for enjoying sex with him so much.

"Kind of." Azula shrugs. Her teeth touch her lower lip as she continues holding a staring contest with the wall. "I ruined my parent's marriage. I know that. And, I mean, I suppose if you really think about it, it is my fault that Zuko was banished."

"Azula, no, shush."

"I used to be proud of it. But only now do I realize how disturbing that is," Azula says slowly, still studying the wall. Mai tries to figure out what she is looking at, but there is nothing there but chipped red paint. "It had nothing to do with my father's level of love for me."

"I would tell myself that too. You'd go crazy if you didn't ─ oh, uh..." Mai realizes how much worse she is making this, to her dissatisfaction.

"Do you want to change me?" Azula asks and Mai shrugs.

"I dunno. I kinda think you have to change at this point. Or at least convincingly pretend to," Mai says, disturbed by Azula talking about her feelings. Ty Lee would be so much more suited to this situation.

"I don't want to do this bullshit _redemption_ thing. But everyone wants me to. Am I that deplorable?"

"Do you want the honest answer or the nice answer?"

"Ugh. I know I'm awful," Azula sighs. "But, you know, I'd rather be in it for myself than in it for other people. Even you and Ty Lee. It's..."

"Easier, hm?" Mai cocks an eyebrow. "You may not have to try so hard at stuff, but you're not an easy way out kind of person. It bothers me that you just want to do what's easy just because it's easy."

"You _always _take the easy way out," Azula snaps and Mai shrugs.

"I know. It's great," Mai says with a small smile. "But you don't work that way. And, you know, this redemption thing sounds like an intriguing challenge."

"I'm not _five_. You can't _play _me like that," Azula snarls huffily and Mai shrugs again. "I am so done with your shrugging and sighing. You are over twenty years old and you simply cannot act like a teenager."

"You're not behaving any more maturely than me," Mai says before excusing herself. She does not want to deal with Azula's feelings any more than Azula wants to deal with her own feelings.

Azula stares after Mai. She supposes she is acting an awful lot like a spoilt child. Maybe she should give the redemption thing a _chance_, as much as it sickens her.

It is true that Azula does take the easy route.

And the fact that it is all she wants now is more disturbing than bending to Zuko's will.

* * *

><p>"Mai, I don't know what that was, but it was..." Zuko says after dinner.<p>

Mai instantly feels incredibly uncomfortable. She runs her fingers through her raven hair and tries to figure out how to explain it to Zuko. That she does not still want him, that she was just monumentally confused.

"Our break up was terrible and I hate you. I had sex with you because I felt like it and for no more significant reason," Mai says flatly and Zuko's eyes widen. He does not know what to say to that, but she has made it crisp and clear.

"I... I'm still in love with you," Zuko says and Mai licks her lips. She feels like she has just been stabbed in the gut, and it is most uncomfortable.

"I'm not," Mai says earnestly. Zuko squirms slightly. "I'm really not. We've tried to make it work so many times, and every time we do, I wind up screwed over. I end up trying to _find myself_. and I found Azula. Those last days of summer with them felt like the right thing for the first time in years."

"I..." Zuko does not know what to say. He did not expect such raw and intimate words from Mai. Even when they spoke about deeper things, or the emotional aspects of their relationship, she was difficult to penetrate and treated everything like a joke. But right now she seems dead serious.

"I'm in love with them."

"There's not a happy ending."

"Well, I don't give a fuck then, Zuko," Mai says sharply. Ugh. She regrets fucking him _so _much. "I'd rather be happy than have a happy ending."

"How is it ever going to be more than a love triangle that only Azula is winning at?" Zuko snaps and Mai grits her teeth.

"It might not be. I have no idea at this point. And Azula and Ty Lee seem constantly on the verge of ripping each other's throats out. But I need to try. I would never be able to forgive myself if I didn't try to make this work."

"But..." Zuko has nothing.

"Stay out of it. And so help me, if you tell anyone we had sex, I will chop off one of your fingers." Mai walks away as Zuko opens his mouth to further protest.

He gazes after her for too long. He thought he would never lose her. Maybe they were kids and dumb and knew they _had _to be together, but he has thought about her every day for so long. And now she is here, living with him.

But she is in love with Azula and Ty Lee.

And Zuko does not know what changed, or when and how he and Mai lost their way.

* * *

><p>After dinner, Mai goes to spend the weekend with her mother and brother. She tried not to let them find out she was in Caldera, but it went sourly when they uncovered it. And escaping Zuko seems like the absolute best scenario after what she did on his desk.<p>

Azula and Ty Lee lie down together without Mai for the first time in what feels like centuries. And of course, Ty Lee wants to use this moment to confront Azula.

"Do you ever think about all the times you had with somebody and you just watch it over and over again in your head just looking for what first went wrong?" Ty Lee asks as she finds Azula with her eyes closed, lying down, but not asleep.

"No," Azula lies, not opening her eyes. Ty Lee grits her teeth and leans against the wall. "I'm sure Zuko does. He seems pretty angry about losing Mai to me. To _us_, I suppose."

"I'm talking about you and me," Ty Lee says as if Azula does not know. As if she did not make it blatantly obvious the moment she walked in and washed the room in the heat of her anger. But Azula refuses to melt.

"I don't understand what went wrong with us in the first place," Azula says sharply and Ty Lee supposes that she considers it progress.

"Well, I did save Mai's life and screw you over. And I wouldn't marry you. And I never visited you even though I totally kept telling myself I would," Ty Lee says and Azula sighs.

The princess is well aware that Ty Lee is blaming herself solely so that Azula will tell her that it is not her fault.

But Azula gives in. We all have our weaknesses, even those who have transcended meager humanity like Azula.

"It's not your fault. I don't blame you anymore. That was..." Azula pauses for a moment as Ty Lee waits for more with bated breath. "That was the easy way out."

"I thought we had a real future together," Ty Lee says softly and Azula scoffs. "What? What?"

"You think I didn't? I would not have wasted my time with you for fun. It was an investment. But it sure didn't pay off in the end. If you really loved me, you would not have chosen Mai," Azula says airily and Ty Lee does not know why she thought Azula was going to play nice in this discussion. "You were a waste of my time and my energy. I was young, admittedly. And I thought I was in love. But evidently I was wrong, and I do not love you."

"Then why did you propose to me, huh?" Ty Lee's fists are clenched so tightly that her hands are mottled blood red and moon white.

"Insanity?" Azula shrugs.

Ty Lee just shakes her head. Her mouth tastes strongly of metal.

"I still love you. Even if I have to share with Mai," Ty Lee says and Azula breathes in deeply like a dragon about to torch a village.

"Don't act like you're so much better than me," Azula says, her tone heated for the first time. Ty Lee feels victorious. Anger is the opposite of ice. "You're not. And all of my feelings for you are dead. Long, long dead. The only way I would ever be with you is─"

Ty Lee interrupts Azula with a feverish kiss. Azula sinks into it. She felt it too. Or maybe just such violent hatred that arousal is the only logical next step.

The first night, Azula said it would not be love. There was no way she could love because Azula was born incapable, or made incapable perhaps. And Ty Lee did not resist, because she felt that Azula had an ocean of mysteries beneath the predictable, cold tyrant that she was.

And this night, the fact that Azula denies any emotion just makes it all the more passionate. Ty Lee claws at her, digging into her skin. She breathes her in, the scent of floral perfume and the lingering smoke in her raven hair.

Her lips taste metallic, torn to shreds by her teeth. Their tongues war.

It is not perfect. It is messy, hot, wet. It is not perfect.

But to Ty Lee, it could not be any better.

And to Azula, it is utter bliss.

Maybe there are no happy endings. Azula sure does not think she is going to live happily, happily, happily ever after with her cute pet acrobat. But tonight is worth it.

* * *

><p>Two weeks later, everything is going well. Azula has been playing along admirably with Zuko, to the point where he has stopped trying to dig his claws into her. Ty Lee and Azula have fantasized about murdering each other less than usual. And the trio has felt less like a love triangle and more like a single, burning flame of engulfing passion.<p>

And then everything changes.

One morning, "Ty Lee, take me to the doctor," Mai orders and Ty Lee jumps at the sudden demand.

She has just hobbled into the room where Azula and Ty Lee are talking quietly shambling and looking like a risen corpse.

"You look like you need a doctor," Azula remarks with a small snarl on her lips. She is rather disgusted by the shade of green Mai's pallid face has become out of nowhere.

"Come on," Mai demands and Ty Lee leaps to her feet, her eyebrows shooting up.

"Okay, okay, just let me put on some real clothes," Ty Lee says as Mai grabs her shoulder. She looks about to fall over. Or perhaps vomit. Hm, Ty Lee decides, she looks about to vomit and then fall over.

Ty Lee gets dressed as she watches Mai closely. She has been sick for two weeks now and it looks to have reached its crescendo.

And so Ty Lee takes Mai to her old family doctor in the heart of Caldera.

The news... is less than pleasant. Ty Lee wishes Mai had a deadly infection instead. That would be much easier to tell Azula about.

"Your problem. You tell her!" Ty Lee declares as soon as she helps Mai into the palace. She bolts away and Mai shakes her head, her lips parted slightly in disbelief.

Mai turns to Azula.

"Are you dying?" Azula asks softly and Mai shakes her head.

"I'm knocked up."

"With whose baby?" Azula screeches and Mai half wishes she just ran with Ty Lee.

"... Zuko."

"You're pregnant? You're pregnant with my brother's child?" Azula's voice is breathless, as if she cannot even believe her own words.

"Yes," Mai responds, not intimidated. This is not _as _terrible as she thought it would be. She thought Azula would at least strike something metal with lightning.

Azula slumps in her seat, exhaling a sigh of frustration.

"Nothing ever works out easily for me, does it?" she moans, as if she is the pregnant one.

Mai shrugs, unsure what else to say.

Except perhaps the fact that she feels utterly panicked and terrified.


	11. basil

**Chapter Eleven**

**Basil (**_**hate**_**)**

* * *

><p>"Mai, do you have something to tell Zuko?" Azula says as soon as she sees her brother. Ty Lee is still successfully hiding, and Mai is being dragged around by her sleeve by Azula. She could not be less enthused about this.<p>

"What happened?" Zuko asks, glancing between them nervously.

Things have been going so well. Azula has been unpleasant, yet amicable. She still harbors great bitterness towards him and makes a multitude of comments about Ba Sing Se, which is new in comparison to her old ravings. And she, Mai and Ty Lee have seemed genuinely happy together, kissing, touching, falling asleep together in plain sight.

But Azula looks livid, her golden eyes molten with rage. Mai looks... like Mai.

"Zuko, you knocked me up," Mai says bluntly and Zuko has to lean against a wall for support. The room suddenly feels like it is spinning to him.

"What?" he demands, gasping for breath. Azula revels in his pain; he deserves it for doing this to her. "I don't... Mai... I'm sorry..."

"Yeah. Good job, Zuko," Mai says feebly. In all honesty, she does not know what to do right now. This is a crisis for her and no one is going to help her in this palace of people obsessed with their individual desires.

"We need to talk about this," Zuko says slowly, breathlessly, his eyes flitting to Azula. He would rather discuss this with her out of the room. Or perhaps somewhere in the Earth Kingdom.

"I can stay. It's my family too," Azula replies so forcefully that Zuko does not argue. He nods once at Azula and tries to catch his breath.

Is it normal to be seeing double? Or is he dying of shock?

"I'm not marrying you," Mai says bluntly and Azula looks briefly happy before remembering she is supposed to be angry. "So don't even suggest it."

"But that's the right thing to do," Zuko says feebly.

"You may or may not have noticed, but I'm pretty much allergic to the right thing to do," Mai says.

"Are you keeping it?" Zuko asks, supposing he needs to clarify that before he starts trying to find a solution.

"Yes. I think. Probably," Mai says and Azula squints at her.

"That was... indecisive," Zuko remarks slowly, but he expects Mai to not make her mind up. She is not very good at making decisions quickly or easily, or, well, decisively.

"I'll help you raise it," Mai says honestly and Zuko does not know what to say. "I'm not going to just leave it to you and run, which was my initial decision on my way back from the doctor. It's up to you if you want it to be a legitimate heir or not. I honestly don't give a fuck."

"I think I have to look at the laws about that," Zuko says, his head throbbing.

"You can't actually be thinking of making some bastard child the Fire Lord," Azula says forcefully. "You've done enough to fuck up this Nation, Zuko."

"Look, I don't know, okay?" Zuko snaps and Azula recoils.

Before Azula and Zuko break into a fight, Ty Lee bursts into the room.

"I hear fighting! It's all going to be okay," Ty Lee says, attempting to reassure the room. Her radiating warmth is slightly calming to Zuko, and melts Azula's ice ever so slightly, like a hot day in a cold winter. "We have time to figure this out. Right now, we just need to be supportive and happy and a good family."

"When did you become part of my family?" Azula snarls and Ty Lee bites her lower lip. Azula has no regrets about her words but Mai shifts her weight from foot to foot uncomfortably.

"Can you two _please_ leave so Zuko and I can discuss this like adults?" Mai demands, glancing between Azula and Ty Lee.

"Fine," Azula says sharply. "You've made it quite clear that you prefer Zuko over the years."

"Azula, shut up!" Mai snaps and the princess's eyes widen.

She looks at Mai as if she is something stuck on the bottom of her shoe, grabs Ty Lee by the shoulder and leaves the room like a lightning storm.

Mai sighs and turns to Zuko. "Alright, what are we going to do?"

He feels slightly relieved. But the anger simmering in her amber eyes makes him more nervous than Azula's jealousy. And that is a significant statement.

* * *

><p>Ty Lee looks to Azula and opens her mouth to speak.<p>

Azula shakes her head.

And the princess is gone.

Ty Lee stares after her and wonders why she watches her walk away so often.

_'Stop, don't go,' _is behind her lips but she keeps them sealed.

It'll work out. It'll be okay in the end.

If it's not okay, it's not the end. That's the only thing that keeps Ty Lee clinging on most of the time.

* * *

><p>Zuko leaves the discussion with Mai and finds Azula waiting for him. He knows he has to address her; this involves her as much as he and Mai, as much as he wishes that were not true.<p>

He sits down across from her and waits for her to make her opening argument.

"I hate you for what you did to her," Azula snarls at Zuko and he does not know what to say. Azula has not been bitter towards him for weeks, and now she is at the tipping point. The pregnancy, which is not even hers, has pushed her to a painful, dark place that it wounds Zuko to see her trapped in.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to," Zuko says and Azula scoffs loudly.

"You shouldn't have fucked her, Zuko. She's with me and Ty Lee. You have no respect for me at all. I'm not some bauble you can just toss around. And I'm not something you need to _fix_," Azula snarls and Zuko realizes he might have pushed her too far.

"She threw herself at me," Zuko says, his face as red as his scar. But Azula still looks as if she wants to rip his throat out with her teeth.

"It doesn't matter. It was _wrong_," Azula says sharply.

"Maybe she loves me more than she loves you two," Zuko says fiercely, trying to defend himself against these ridiculous accusations.

"She belongs to me." Azula stands up, glares at Zuko for a moment, and walks away.

She cannot handle him any longer. Azula _wants _to repair her relationship with her brother. But it seems she cannot have Mai and Ty Lee _and _Zuko. Honestly, the decision is incredibly easy.

Mai and Ty Lee over her brother any day.

No matter how much Azula wants to clear the air between she and Zuko.

Or maybe... maybe try to get Zuko to understand. If such a thing is possible.

It makes her head hurt. And now her girlfriend is pregnant with her brother's child. It sickens her to the core and offends her to the soul.

Someone grabs her shoulder. Zuko. He followed her; how cute.

"I want to say I'm sorry," he says, sounding slightly defeated. Azula steadies her stance and decides to hear him out. This is a new twist of his conversations with her. "I shouldn't have slept with her. It's just been really confusing right now."

"Join the club," Azula says icily and Zuko's stomach twists.

"I've been avoiding you since our conversation about Ba Sing Se. I want to talk to you about it," Zuko says and Azula chews on the inside of her cheek. She nods, allowing him to ask. "I guess you couldn't have predicted that the Avatar wasn't dead. And I guess... you wanted me home for some inexplicable reason."

Azula rubs her lips together. She does not know if she wants to have a _heart to heart _with Zuko. She is proud of herself for evading any feelings between she and Zuko, as much as he tries to connect with her on an emotional level.

"Look, I..." Azula does not know the words to say. He is complicated to her. "Thank you for not locking me up again."

"I don't think you've ever said thank you before," Zuko remarks and Azula's expression sours.

"You've never done anything kind for me," Azula replies sharply and Zuko does not argue. He would vouch for her to the end, but she does not want to accept him as that kind of figure in her life.

"I'm on your side. I want you to know that. I know there's a lot of bad blood between us and I don't think it's going to go away very easily. But I'm on your side," Zuko says and Azula studies him, searching for a lie.

She almost wants to find a tell on his face. But she does not; he is being completely honest when he swears to stand beside her.

"You ruined my life," Azula says sharply and Zuko stares at her blankly. "It's not the other way around. One of us is Fire Lord and one of us threw herself off of a cliff a month ago."

Zuko pauses. He does not think that is true. He thinks that is the warped and distorted ideas Ozai planted in her and let blossom out of control. But he licks his lips and makes the first sacrifice. One of them has to swallow their pride eventually if they are going to make real progress.

"You're right," Zuko says and Azula's eyebrows flicker in surprise. Zuko is usually far too stubborn to admit such a thing. "It's not your fault, what happened. A lot of people were involved and I know that I was. If I'm going to force you to accept responsibility for your actions... well, I better accept responsibility for mine."

Azula purses her lips. She searches for cold words and stifles hot emotions. Zuko sees the turmoil of fire and ice inside of her, but he knows better than to comment. He will have to bend to Azula for now if he is going to redeem her. And so help him, he _will_.

"I'll consider your apology," Azula says icily and Zuko expected no more.

She is not going to fall in his arms and turn back the clocks easily. Nothing is going to be the way it was when they were little kids. Especially while Azula is trying to uphold a relationship that relies on her reliving her teenage years.

"Thank you," Zuko says, although he wants to argue with her.

And he watches her walk away. Progress, he supposes, even if it is in painfully small increments.

He will do anything he can to make things right.

But... Zuko has no clue where to start.

* * *

><p>"Your baby is going to be adorable," Ty Lee declares loudly as she is holding Mai's hair.<p>

"Headache. Morning. Early. Sh," is Mai's articulate response.

"But it's a wonderful morning."

"Shut up!" screams Azula from the other room. "I can hear you in here! My eyes hurt and my back hurts and you're keeping me awake with your horrible fake voice!"

Ty Lee's eyes widen. Mai is struck by dry heaves.

This baby is coming into a quite interesting family, in Ty Lee's mind. She is kind of thrilled by that, unlike the other three inhabitants of the palace.

"It's going to be okay in the end," Ty Lee says as Mai leans against the counter, catching her breath. "If it's not okay, it's not the end."

"No optimism before the sun comes up," Mai says bitterly and Ty Lee's small smile fades.

This baby needs to come into a less dysfunctional family than this one.

Ty Lee gets up to find Zuko; he is her best bet. Azula and Mai change but in death, but Zuko shifts Nations and shifts his ideas and being when need be. Just like Ty Lee.

"Hi," Zuko says as she leans against the archway of the doors to the throne room.

"I want to talk to you about the baby," Ty Lee says, walking towards him. He nods, hoping he is not going to run into an Azula level mess. "I think you should get back together with Mai."

"...but you're with her," Zuko says, rubbing his neck. "She's not interested in me, anyway."

"I'll handle she and Azula. I want you to be with Mai. You need to be," Ty Lee says and Zuko wishes she were right. Wishes there were a chance that Mai still loves him. "I... I have to admit I kind of want Azula to myself."

"So does Mai," Zuko says and Ty Lee knows he is right.

"If we all go our separate ways, that's the cleanest break there is," Ty Lee says. "You and Mai can raise your kid. I... I don't know. Sometimes I think I'm the only one of them being rational and that's kinda scary."

"If you can convince Azula and Mai, I mean, I wouldn't say no. I don't think the relationship is healthy, and I mean... I want... just..."

"Sh. I'll handle it."

Ty Lee moves to start with Azula.

* * *

><p>Azula is alone in her room, staring at the wall as she often does. Ty Lee enters the room, having just seen Mai and Zuko discussing the future of their child. Their tones were tender, and Ty Lee hated herself for thinking that this meant she could have Azula.<p>

Ty Lee knows that Azula will be weak now, worn down by the news about the pregnancy. And that Mai does, in the end, love Zuko so much more. And so Ty Lee makes her move with no regrets or inhibitions.

She looks at Azula's body, her knees touching her chin, her ice making the room feel colder than it is. Ty Lee walks to her and whispers, "You're going to be okay."

And Azula hates her for saying it.

Ty Lee kisses Azula on the lips. She slides onto her lap, straddling her and clinging to her. Her skin burns while Azula's is cold and distant. The princess is miles away and, by all means, Ty Lee knows this is wrong. But she presses her lips against Azula's to a weak response.

"It's all going to be okay," Ty Lee whispers into Azula's ear. Her hot breath tickles the princess's neck, and it feels better than it should.

"You're happy about this, aren't you? Because you get me to yourself," Azula hisses and Ty Lee does not relent. She kisses Azula's neck and the princess's fingers twitch to brush her away, but she decides against it. "It isn't a love triangle."

"Azula, Azula, it's always going to be a love triangle. Love isn't equal with two people. It's even less equal with three." Pause. Her tongue runs across Azula's clavicle. The princess tries to derive no pleasure from it, but it is futile. "Just let me love you."

"You hate me," Azula whispers and Ty Lee shakes her head, pressing her lips against Azula's cheekbone.

"I never hated you. I just... I lost you. I lost you, Azula, but I think I found you again." Her fingertips slip to the bottom of Azula's shirt, pulling it upwards and brushing her nails against Azula's navel. It makes her tingle, but she feels as if it is wrong.

"I want it to be how it used to be. When we were teenagers," Azula breathes as Ty Lee's feverish hands run across Azula's cold skin, brushing along the blossoming goosebumps and towards her small, round breasts.

"It's not that way anymore. We're not those people anymore."

"Don't exploit Mai like this." And Ty Lee's lips touch Azula's breast. A moan escapes Azula's lips that she instantly regrets. She wonders why she does not fight or lecture Ty Lee. Or tell her how this is all her anger as well, and just because lust has combined with rage does not mean she is doing the right thing.

"I love you both. And I want to be with both of you. We can still be with Mai through this. But I just want you to know that she still loves Zuko. And even though sometimes I just want to _throttle _you or punch you, I still love you. Maybe it can work out like that," Ty Lee whispers, sliding her fingers to trace patterns along the inside of Azula's thigh.

"You don't understand. I want to be with her more than I want to be with you. If this is unequal or a competition... she's winning," Azula says and Ty Lee yanks her hand away. Strangely enough, Azula does not miss the heat.

"What? What the fuck?" Ty Lee jumps up, removing herself from Azula's lap. She ignores the wetness and clenches her fists. "You always loved me! You begged me to come with you! You asked me to marry you! Mai betrayed you! Mai said she loved Zuko more than you at least a thousand times! I would never betray you."

"But you'd betray her so easily," Azula purrs and Ty Lee does not know what to think. The anger rises in her like acidic bile. Azula cannot want _Mai _more than her. That has never been how it worked. It was Mai who lay there silently as Azula and Ty Lee made love and with Mai it was fucking and nothing more passionate.

"It's not betrayal. I want to be with her too, but I..."

"But you slink in here and try to make me leave her for you. That's what ruined us last time. It wasn't the Boiling Rock or time or growing up. It was you," Azula says slowly, her cold, detached speech giving Ty Lee chills.

"I loved you. She loved Zuko. And now she's pregnant and she can marry him and they can raise their baby and we can have each other," Ty Lee screams and Azula is utterly confused.

"It's not meant to be that way," Azula whispers and Ty Lee cannot believe her. She is aghast and frustrated.

Ty Lee lunges forward, grabbing Azula by the shoulder. Azula's eyes flash but she otherwise does not react.

"You love me. You love me like she will _never _love you," Ty Lee says shrilly and Azula thought her anger was long gone. But she is still about to combust. "We belong to each other and you have to be kidding me if you think that the three of us will have a happy ending. So have a happy ending with me."

"No," Azula says, unsure if she wants to hurt Ty Lee or if she genuinely believes it.

"Admit it! Admit you want me more!" Ty Lee shouts and Azula can feel it unraveling again. This is how it began last time, when they became too close and Mai fell deeper and harder for Zuko.

"No," Azula repeats and Ty Lee clenches her jaw.

Ty Lee's hand reaches for Azula's neck and Azula seizes her by the arm, flipping her onto the mattress. Ty Lee gasps as the winds are knocked out of her; she did not expect the cold and passive Azula to fight back like that.

Azula is on top of her and for a moment she thinks the princess is going to try to kill her. Azula may have frozen over, but she still can be devastatingly unpredictable. Azula's teeth sink into Ty Lee's lower lip and it is forceful, more so than playful bites.

And Azula is reminded of the bruises on her abdomen that tormented her as they faded. The ones she could only stare at and think of her father, and how she could blame Ty Lee so easily for doing something she could not have known would hurt so badly. Azula's lips move to her neck, leaving a bruise, making Ty Lee gasp and moan as if she likes it. Azula supposes she should _want _Ty Lee to like it, but she does not know. She does not know anymore because her feelings for Mai and Ty Lee have gotten too confusing.

Azula's hand drivels down Ty Lee's abdomen, not stopping, not caressing and fondling as they would have before. Or as they would if Mai were in the middle of it with them. She slides two fingers into her. That hurts. That brings some satisfaction to Azula that she knows she should not feel.

Before she thinks through what she is doing, she sets her hand over Ty Lee's mouth, pressing down against her teeth.

And then she stops. She pulls away, terrified at what she has just tried or done or perhaps succeeded at. Her hand is damp with tears that rolled from Ty Lee's eyes and Azula slips onto her feet, stumbling to the bathroom door and retching into the sink.

She looks up in the mirror and can only see a monster.

Neither of them deserve her.

Why they play to be hers, Azula will never understand.

She fights back her own tears as Ty Lee flees the room.

* * *

><p>Mai comes to bed, feeling ill. Azula watches her from the bed, sinking further into the blankets.<p>

"Do you want to be with Zuko?" Azula whispers and Mai shakes her head.

"Don't ask that anymore. I don't. I want to be with you and her too. That's how it's going to happen," Mai says softly and Azula closes her eyes.

"I know we both want this. I don't think Ty Lee does," Azula says softly and Mai does not know if she wants to question Azula further.

"Where is Ty Lee, anyway?" Mai asks as she slips into bed. She feels queasy and exhausted as she examines Azula closely. She has that detached, broken look in her eyes that makes Mai nervous. "Where is she?"

"I don't know." Pause. "I did something awful, Mai. I did something really awful."

"Well, that's not uncharacteristic of you," Mai jokes before realizing this is actually serious. She touches Azula's hand and wraps her fingers around the princess's bony wrist. "What happened?"

"I hurt her." Silence. Mai swallows and is unsure what Azula means. And she is more unsure of if she _wants _to know what Azula means. "She came to me and tried to get us back together. And I resisted and she came at me and my throat and I..."

"You don't have to say this," Mai says quietly. _Please don't say this_, hides behind her lips, the words she wants to say but cannot bring herself to voice.

"You should ask her," Azula whispers before turning over. Mai reaches to touch her, but then changes her mind.

Azula is a mess. But so is Ty Lee. And so is Mai. They are all messy together and maybe that is what makes it perfect in its imperfections. Their love is something Mai did not believe in until the day she saw Azula in that hospital bed. Or the day she kissed Ty Lee. Or the moment Mai decided to let Azula stay instead of doing the right thing and turning her in.

There _will _be a happy ending to this story if it is the last thing she does. But now she feels slightly torn between her loyalty to her child and her loyalty to the two girls she loves. She regrets time and time proclaiming Zuko superior.

Because she loves them the most, the hardest, the most fiercely. Only Azula won't say it for fear of being seen as weak, Mai won't say it because she does not want anyone to know that she cares, and Ty Lee is too blinded by anger and hurt to even think about opening herself to love.

Messy, messy. Necessary, necessary.

Mai walks down the hall in search of Ty Lee. She finds her in the guest room, curled up in the bed. She looks weak and hurt and Mai is starting to piece together what went on between she and Azula. Mai is not a person who has any easy time consoling others. She does not know why she was appointed as the mediator of their romance, but she sits beside Ty Lee anyway. And hesitantly, she sets her hand on Ty Lee's leg.

"What did she do to you?" Mai asks softly, studying Ty Lee. She can see it in her face and she is not sure she wants to hear it spoken aloud.

"It doesn't matter." Ty Lee is silent for a moment. "I'm not mad at her anymore. I mean, I _want _to be mad at her. But I'm not. I just want us to be together."

"Well, we're attempting that. Terribly. But we all kind of suck at romance, which is... unsurprising," Mai says with a shrug. Ty Lee pulls her into a surprise kiss and Mai's amber eyes flash wide before closing and drinking in the suffocation.

"I'm going to sleep in with you two," Ty Lee whispers as the kiss breaks. Mai is not sure what this means, if Ty Lee is surrendering herself to Mai and Azula, but she does not protest. She guides Ty Lee to their room and Azula instantly looks uncomfortable.

"We have to set this straight," Mai says as Ty Lee uncomfortably moves towards the bed. "This can't be a competition. I'm not taking any of Azula's games, I'm not handling any of your histrionics, Ty Lee. If we want this, we want it. And if we don't, we better say it now before we make our choice."

Azula pauses, lingering on her doubts. She knows that if she surrenders herself to this unquenchable desire she may be screwed. It is impossible to tell if her sanity can even last when she is absorbed into Mai and Ty Lee, trying to make things how they used to be and failing.

"I want this," Ty Lee says, although in her gut she is unsure, taking Azula's hand. Azula studies her with a quizzical expression, unsure how she can be clutching Azula gently after what Azula just committed against her. It feels twisted and sick. But, honestly, that is how Azula likes it.

"I want it too," Azula agrees and Mai nods.

"Well that's settled. No more triangle. No more competition. No more Zuko, regardless of this glorified parasite. We're pretty stuck and we might as well be stuck together," Mai declares and Azula does not mind surrendering control to her. When she dripped candle wax onto Azula's skin, she gave in.

And now, Azula gives in and does not regret it.

How strange.

Very strange.

They fall asleep in each other's arms.

* * *

><p>AN: I promise wholeheartedly that this will not be Maiko and Tyzula. It is a Maizulee story, and will have a Maizulee ending and is endgame Maizulee. There's just going to be some questioning of the relationship and everything.


End file.
